Joshua Nearing a Return as Toronto's Injury List Finally Gets Shorter

Dakota Joshua is eligible to come off injured reserve, a small piece of good news for a team that has been collecting bad news all month. He's been on IR alongside Max Domi, William Villeneuve, Elvis Merzlikins, and Cade Webber — a list long enough that any subtraction from it counts.

Joshua won't fix what ails this roster. The forward group has been reshuffled repeatedly since training camp, and the bigger absences — Tavares, who I noted left the Buffalo game with an injury, and Ekman-Larsson, who's been day-to-day — are the ones that actually move the needle on lineup construction. Joshua is depth, and depth is what Toronto has been running short on.

Still, getting him back into the mix matters in a narrow way. The team has been leaning on Miles Wood after the AHL callup and has shuffled McKenna and Cowan around the middle six trying to find something that works. Another body who knows the system and can play a physical role is not nothing, even at this stage of a lost season.