Just when our Maple Leafs were finally healthy and posed to make some noise, Pavel Kubina goes down with an injury in his right knee. Kubina suffered the injury to his medial collateral ligament (MCL) against the Rangers during Saturday’s game.

Leaf fans have a general dislike for Pavel Kubina as he has not shown his Stanley Cup form when he was with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Unfortunately he has been one of the better defencemen in the league. His 11 points puts him 12th in league scoring for defencemen, and his +7 plus/minus rating ties him for 6th.

He is tied for 5th on the Maple Leafs in scoring, and is 4th in plus/minus (which also give him the highest rating out of all defencemen on the team).

Whether people like him or not, Pavel Kubina will be sorely missed on our blue line. The next few games will tell how much. This most likely puts Anton Stralman back into the game. There is a big difference between Kubina’s stats and Stralman’s (7 G, 0 P, -4), so we’ll see how that works out.

Kubina also eats a lot of ice time. He is averaging 24:22 per game, which is the most of any player on the team. This obviously shuffles things around with Kaberle and McCabe set to take up more time.

Kubina being out not only impacts the Leafs directly, but indirectly as well, as the young guys need to start playing more important minutes, and time will tell if they can handle it.