The Toronto Maple Leafs will need their depth to thrive without Morgan Rielly

With Morgan Rielly expected to be punished for retaliating against Ridley Greig's empty net goal on Saturday night, the Toronto Maple Leafs need defensive depth to step up for the foreseeable future.

If we look at the average ice time on the Maple Leafs blue line, the most defensemen after Rielly are TJ Brody with 21:44, Jake McCabe with 20:17, Timothy Liljegren with 18:54, and Mark Giordano with 17. :05 and Simon Benoit 16:01.

However, Brody has been up and down all season; McCabe had his own flair or struggles, and Liljegren wasn't exactly what the team expected the first-round pick to be.

On Monday's episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli, Tyler Yaremchuk and Jay Rosehill discuss the story and what needs to be done to save the maple leaf's place in the Atlantic.

Tyler Yaremchuk: We've wondered all year what could spark this Maple Leafs team: whether it's a coaching change or a big trade, but do you think losing Morgan Rielly could be a winning point, no matter how many games he's sidelined? Can they see this as what finally brought them together?

Jay Rosehill: On paper, it doesn't make sense because you're leaving guys like Jake McCabe and Simon Benoit to step up. All these guys need to step up. If you look at last year, they lost Rielly for a significant amount of time and they went on an absolute run, which was a bit of a letdown.

As you say, Tyler, maybe these people are realizing that a big piece of the puzzle is missing, and people need to fill it in. These games they're playing, they're very important points in the standings, and I don't think Toronto thought they were in this position at this point in the season, but it is.

You can watch the rest of the episode and the full episode here…