Sheldon Keefe announces two big changes to his lineup.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are already making changes to their lineup. 

On Saturday Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe confirmed to reporters that he would be making at least two significant changes to his lineup after a defeat at the hands of the Ottawa Senators this week. The Senators, a team many predicted to rank at the bottom of the North Division standings, surprised the Leafs on Friday by defeating them 5 - 3 and handing the buds their first loss of the season.

Now I doubt that Keefe is reading too much into just a single loss, but I also suspect that he wants to avoid some of the dips in form that his team has had in recent seasons. The biggest change comes with the addition of forward Nick Robertson to the line up this evening, which means that Robertson is expected to make his highly anticipated debut in the National Hockey League. Unfortunately an opportunity gained for Robertson means an opportunity lost for someone else on the roster and this evening it will be Alexander Barabanov who will be the odd man out. 

As I said however there are two significant changes this evening and it was the announcement of this second bit of news that raised some eyebrows. According to Keefe the Leafs will not be dressing starting netminder Frederik Andersen at all this evening and instead it will be Jack Campbell who gets the start in goal this evening and it will be Aaron Dell who will step onto the bench to serve in the role of backup goaltender. This seems like an extremely unusual move and seems even more curious coming off a loss to a team that many had expected the Leafs to defeat, however Keefe was quick to dismiss any notion that there was something going on there. 

Keefe instead told reporters that this is something they plan to do regularly throughout the course of this NHL season and perhaps this is simply a way the team feels they can get their goalies more high quality rest while operating under the NHL's mandatory 3 goalie rule for this season. Only time will tell if that holds true throughout the season.