The Marlies had three games last week as they work through their Royal Winter Fair road trip. They hammered the Hamilton Hammers again on Wednesday night, 5-1. I'm not going to write much about this one as the Hammers are simply bad right now and there's no point in analyzing that game.

Then it was off to Winnipeg to play the Manitoba Moose for back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday nights. Both games were lost in OT to the Moose, 2-1 on Friday and 4-3 on Saturday.

Roster Updates

Bo Groulx returned to the team after seven games with the Leafs.
Ben Danford is out injured, more on that below.
Defencemen Ben Meehan and Frank Djurasevic were recalled from the Cincinnati Cyclones to cover for Cole McWard, who was called up to the Leafs.

Game Highlights

I'm not going to put in every clip here, but some interesting ones.

This was the only goal scored by the Marlies on Friday, but it's a good one and it was scored by Marc Johnstone.

Arty was great in this game too, with Sullivan saying "Yeah, like you said, it was low event, but I felt like on both teams there was a lot of grade-A scoring chances [where] the breakdowns became some grade-As. Both goaltenders had to make some really, really big saves, even though there wasn't a ton of scoring chances in the whole hockey game."

Marc Johnstone scored another nice one on Saturday and this was really about getting the momentum on their side and getting the game tied with lots of time left in the third to get another.

The lowlight of the Saturday night was when Chase Yoder scored shorthanded. It was scored five-on four but the breakdown happened while it was five-on three and then Yoder got the puck a few seconds after he left the penalty box. I can't even remember hearing of him before. He was a Penguins sixth round draft pick in 2020 which is a draft where almost few NHL players have emerged after the third round, though notably there's Matt Rempe and Devon Levi.

Coach's comments

On the third-period line changes Saturday

Steve Sullivan: I actually changed the lines late in the second period. So I had put Valis with Holinka and Tverberg. I kind of shifted things around, just looking for a spark. Even going back to yesterday's game too, we only scored one goal yesterday, and we had—I mean, we only had one today [at that point in the game], so I figured I had to try to change something up and see if some of the other guys can kind of get a little bit of chemistry and just kind of get some spark going.

On the shorthanded goal

Steve Sullivan: Yeah, we're—we're pressing hard. We're trying to—right? We're trying to shrink the zone. It's five-on-three and we just kind of lose a little bit of a battle right there and the puck kind of trickles out and, they're coming out of the box and they get a two-on-one which kind of springs into a breakaway and the guy makes a good play.

On the weekend as a whole

The Marlies left Winnipeg with two standings points, but it felt bittersweet, as in the last way you want to pick up two points is by two OT losses.

Steve Sullivan: You know, the way we played in spurts, I think we could have found a way to get a few more points out of this, maybe get a win out of this instead of just two overtime losses. It's fine but I think that when we look back at this it's some points that we left on the table.

On Noah Chadwick's development

Chadwick was a sixth-round draft pick by the Leafs in 2023, now 21 years old, this is his second full season on the Marlies after playing major junior for the Lethbridge Hurricanes in the WHL. You can read more about him here in our summer Top 25 Under 25.

2026 T25U25: Noah Chadwick is #19
Making the jump to pro hockey is hard.
PPP LeafsHardev

Steve Sullivan: He continues to get better. We want him to be a little bit more assertive in his play. We want him to be a little bit harder to play against as a defenseman. He's tall, he's got a long reach and we like all that about him. It's a matter of trying to make sure he is harder to play against. We know that he can make some plays on the offensive from the blue line, we don't want to take that away from him, and today was a good example of that? He took the puck off the wall, he was able to walk the blue line, attack the net, and we had a good screen in front of him and he ended up burying it and got us going, so it was a really good goal by him.

On Ben Danford being out and the call-ups from the Cyclones

Steve Sullivan: (said on Saturday night) We're still day-to-day right now, so we had Mermis go up, we had McWard get called up, so we had to fill it up to make sure that we had some bodies here.

A Marlies representative further added the team was "waiting for more information" to see if he will join them on the next leg of the road trip, which includes playing the Syracuse Crunch on Friday and the Providence Bruins on Sunday.

That new information arrived on Monday with news that Danford has a broken wrist and his status has changed to week-to-week. It's a tough blow for a guy looking to get as much pro-experience as possible, but it could be much worse. Now is a good time to get rested and healed up and then go through the return-to-play process so he can possibly be ready right after the holidays, or even before.

Here are the current North Division standings as of last night.

The Marlies' next game is Friday in Syracuse against the Crunch. It would be nice to get two points there, but things are going OK so far this season, though some of the standings points are earned by OT losses, which isn't how you want to stay afloat at the top of the standings.

Toronto Marlies