Eat Sleep Leafs

Is the Leafs offseason training program keeping them in last place?

Long-time NHLer Gary Roberts deemed it a factor when he joined the Bill Watters Show on Thursday.

“Hockey is not an aerobic sport,” Roberts told Watters. “It’s anaerobic, about being strong, powerful, and fast and you don’t get that by riding the stationary bike. Ron Wilson said before that the one thing he’d noticed was the team looked in better shape because they all rode the bike all summer. That’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Wilson responded to the comments on Friday afternoon following an intense practice at the Mastercard Centre.

“First of all, Gary doesn’t know the program that we did,” Wilson said.

“We believe in the program and we respect Gary, but unless you were actually involved in all the stuff our players did anaerobically, aerobically, strength conditioning and everything else, it’s really not fair for anybody on the outside to comment. We’re happy with the results and all our testing and we haven’t had any issues in terms of groin strains or health issues like that. We’ve been healthy, we just haven’t played very well on the ice.”

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Calls for change are widespread, but there was nothing new to report at practice Friday.

“It would give us a boost, but we’re kind of limited,” Wilson said of potential call-ups. “We can’t send anybody down, that’s what everybody fails to realize. We’ve got [Rosehill] down on a two-week conditioning because he’d have to go through waivers. We wouldn’t even have time if we did that right now to bring anybody up.”

Waivers would require a 24-hour waiting period for the player involved to actually clear, leaving it until late in the afternoon for a potential change to be made in time for Saturday’s game.

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Wilson wouldn’t reveal his starting goalie for Saturday’s game, but the guess here is that Vesa Toskala gets the call. Toskala hasn't started a game at home since October 10th versus Pittsburgh.

Forwards
Ponikarovsky Stajan Kessel
Blake Grabovski Hagman
Kulemin Mitchell Stempniak
Primeau Wallin Mayers

Defense
Kaberle Finger
Beauchemin White
Gunnarson Schenn
Exelby

Goalies
Toskala
Gustavsson

-J.Siegel
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