Reaves hasn’t made much impact since the first couple of games. He hasn’t been hitting as much but a big reason is he’s been playing less minutes. He’s been on the ice when a lot of goals were scored against but my eye test tells me that the vast majority of those goals were due to poor goaltending and team defence.
He should get his share of blame but he’s the least of Leafs’ problems right now. I don’t even think he’s been used properly by Keefe. Right after Marchand took out Liljegren, why didn’t he send out the Reaves the next shift just to get in on his face ? 0ne shift is not gonna hurt the team but that would send out a clear message that they’re not going to put up with Marchand’s nonsense.
Players go through bad and good stretches just like all of us do in real life. When players are on a good roll every time they touch the puck it’d end up going in for them, when they’ve on a bad roll, like what Reaves is going through now, every break would just go against them.
The same people who are dumping on Reaves so hard now don’t seem have any bad things to say about Klingberg, Bertuzzi, and Samsonov who are contributing to the Leafs’ woes much more than Reaves. The same inclination I’ve seen over the years on player like Simmonds, Kadri . Every time the team struggles these players seem to get singled out much more.
