Saturday will be the Leafs’ fourth game of the preseason and while there has been a reduction in the number of preseason games, it still feels like the preseason goes on far too long and lends itself to poor decisions instead of serving its true purpose, reminding players of the speed of the NHL game and get caught up to it. I’m not sure any of these games will have much influence on who is or isn’t in the Leafs lineup, but the fact that there isn’t another preseason game until next Thursday makes it seem like Sunday will bring a significant round of cuts.

Here are some other stray thoughts:

Count me amongst the crowd unexcited by the idea of William Nylander playing centre. While I agree with Willy that if he’s going to get a look at the position he deserves more than a game or a couple of training camp sessions, and I’m glad they’ve committed him to putting in the work this September, I still find myself landing at the conclusion that putting in this work is more of “in case of emergency” type of familiarity with the role and having Nylander at centre shouldn’t be a Plan A.

The same holds true for Max Domi, although moving Domi to centre doesn’t hurt the Leafs as much as moving Nylander to the position. He is too good on the wing to risk his success in a new role that will see him take a step back and while the Leafs are still early in the process, Nylander at centre hasn’t been encouraging.

This isn’t really just about Nylander at centre, but also the Leafs’ injury situation. Despite nothing being overly serious, the Leafs have seen Matthews, Nylander, and Tavares have some level of injury in the preseason, which drops the Leafs down to a group consisting of David Kampf, Max Domi, Pontus Holmberg, and Steven Lorentz pretty quickly. That’s a pretty scary group to rely on and with Jacob Quillan not looking ready, while Fraser Minten is also out due to injury during training camp, the idea of finding an upgrade at the position makes a ton of sense and if the Leafs are shopping the trade market, all eggs should be in the centre basket, primarily focusing on a 2nd or 3rd line guy.

On Thursday night, the Maple Leafs went with what was essentially an NHL roster, minus the injured Auston Matthews and Calle Jarnkrok. The move was a little bizarre but Craig Berube had expressed a desire earlier in the week to get his NHL group together sooner rather than later. While I’ll grant him that for practice sessions, I completely disagree that running a full NHL roster rather than just the bare minimum of NHLers in preseason games is confusing.

As the Leafs saw with Tavares and Nylander, it often becomes an additional opportunity to get injured. At best, you get to see your lines in an imbalanced matchup against AHL or disinterested talent. There isn’t much to learn at this point, and while the Leafs were lucky with Nylander that it wasn’t more serious, it was a moment when the cons definitely outweighed the pros.

The Leafs often don’t give a full workload to their veterans but at best it needs to mirror the NFL approach, where the starters get a few snaps and hand the rest of the game over to the depth. And it’s the depth that needs to be better understood. There is value in knowing how Easton Cowan fares against AHL talent. If he wouldn’t be a dominant AHLer, that would be a strong case for sending him back to junior and showing that more time is needed. There is value in establishing a pecking order for callups and knowing who can fill what role, and with Berube’s approach of establishing an NHL group, giving the second group a chance to play their way into the mix makes more sense than seeing what Mitch Marner can do against the Laval Rocket.

Okay, a success story might be a stretch and if it isn’t painfully clear, I’m not a huge fan of drawing conclusions from the preseason. That being said, Matt Murray’s movements, play, and tracking so far can at least confirm that he is ready to go this year and having him as a third-string option doesn’t require the qualifier that Dennis Hildeby is in fact going to be the guy who actually ends up 3rd on the depth chart due to injury.

Murray being ready to go and potentially being healthier than he’s been in years adds a lot of intrigue to what his upside could be and with Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz having some question marks about what their workload can look like attached to them, Murray being a real option puts my mind at ease.

That said, the Leafs do need to find an opportunity at some point in this season to plan for a game or two for Dennis Hildeby as he could be knocking on the Leafs door sooner rather than later.