Rumor: Injuries to Matthews, Thornton, have Leafs shopping for forwards.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have taken a significant hit to their line up early on in this shortened National Hockey League season, and with each game counting for that much more this time around it sounds like Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas may already be looking to make a move.

On Saturday night NHL insider Elliotte Friedman made comments that indicated he believes the Leafs are wasting no time in trying to improve their team off the back of those aforementioned injuries. Friedman reported that the Leafs are specifically targeting players at the forward position, which makes a great deal of sense when you consider that both Joe Thornton and Nick Robertson will be out long term and that star forward Auston Matthews has also been sidelined by injury, although that us believed to be short term.

"In Toronto there are a couple of long term injuries, Nick Robertson and Joe Thornton, Auston Matthews day to day we will see if he plays tomorrow in Calgary," said Friedman on Saturday night. "But the Maple Leafs are looking. You know they've got a lot of forwards. They are very deep and those players will be given the opportunity to take the spots, but I do think they are looking around to see if they can add or upgrade with their forward group."

Friedman did not share any details in regards to who the Maple Leafs may be targeting or in regards to which players they would be prepared to give up in order to facilitate such a move. The Leafs have placed both Robertson and Thornton on injured reserve which has given them $821,667 and $700,00 in cap relief, but those players had to be replaced in the line up. At the end of the day this has left  the Leafs with no real savings against the cap.

 Currently the Leafs have just under $30,000 in projected cap space, so any trade that they do manage to pull off will require some serious finessing on the part of their management. As a result of the salary cap constraints the Leafs are currently dealing with, something that is the case for many teams around the league at this time, I suspect any trade they do make would be relatively minor at this stage of the season.