Jake McCabe won’t miss a game after taking a stick to the face in Columbus, but the Maple Leafs defenseman isn’t brushing off what happened.
McCabe said the play left him rattled for a few seconds after Kent Johnson’s stick got up under his visor on Tuesday.
“Certainly panic for a couple of seconds, but I was able to open it up quick and I could still see,” said McCabe, who was back on the Maple Leafs defence Thursday morning before playing the New York Rangers. (Team therapist) Paul Ayotte, our training staff and (the Blue Jackets) doctors took good care of us.”
He did leave the ice bleeding and headed to the room, and he admitted he wanted to try to come back. By the time the checks were finished, though, Toronto was already up by four and the swelling around his eye had become a factor.
McCabe’s takeaway from the incident was straightforward. He felt Johnson’s blade was dangerously high as he tried to push past him.
”I’ll be honest, I think guys can take better care of their sticks for sure,” said McCabe, a father of three. “It was an accident and I can’t fault that, (but) the general consensus I’m getting, (is that) a couple of high sticks the last three or four games, they’re from younger players. Keep your sticks down.”
McCabe said Johnson never reached out afterward, though Columbus players did check on him after the game and he expects the message got back to Johnson, who took a double-minor on the play.
Toronto’s blue line is still dealing with a couple of moving parts. Chris Tanev remains out week-to-week with an upper body injury, which put McCabe back alongside Darren Raddysh at Thursday’s skate. Marshall Rifai was also off the ice early and is a game-time decision, opening the door for Nick Blankenburg to slide back in.
Coach Jim Hiller said the Leafs have not decided whether Tanev or alternate captain John Tavares will travel with the team to Western Canada on Friday. Tavares is also week-to-week with an undisclosed injury.
Thursday’s matchup carried a personal layer for Darren Raddysh, who was excited to face younger brother Taylor for the first time while one of them is wearing his hometown club’s sweater. Their father, Dwayne Raddysh, died last March from pancreatic cancer, and the family had long worked out the old ticket arrangement: Leafs tickets for him, with Taylor getting Devils games and Darren taking whatever was left.
“We’ve talked about this game a long time,” Darren said of Taylor. “The day (of the Toronto-Tampa Bay trade) we looked at each other and said: ‘Is this real’?”
The brothers were briefly teammates in Tampa and also played together in junior with Erie. Darren said Taylor may have had the edge in their head-to-head battles over the years, though he pointed to Taylor’s three points and a win in the most recent meeting between Tampa Bay and the Rangers.
“It would be amazing to play with him again and hopefully we have that opportunity one day,” Darren said. “But he’s on the other team tonight and like (Kirill Marchenko said in his return to Columbus) there are no friends out there.”
The Rangers enter with the heavy burden of the death of franchise star Ron Duguay after a long fight with cancer. They’re also three points ahead of Toronto, having flipped their home-ice fortunes from last season: strong at Madison Square Garden, shaky on the road, with just one road win so far.
Toronto, though, brings plenty of firepower. Auston Matthews and William Nylander are both in the league’s top 10 scorers, and the Leafs also own the NHL’s best penalty-killing numbers to this point.
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