Leafs’ Jake McCabe leaves game against Blue Jackets with injury

The Toronto Maple Leafs picked up their second win in as many nights on Tuesday with a convincing win on the road against the Columbus Blue Jackets, but it came at a cost.

Veteran defenseman Jake McCabe was forced out of the game early with an apparent injury to his face after he took a stick up high late in the first period. The team ruled him out for the remainder of the game during the second intermission.

In the midst of his 14th season in the NHL, McCabe has been skating on the Leafs’ top pairing alongside big ticket offseason acquisition Darren Raddysh. Through 10 games, McCabe has yet to record a point while skating to a minus-1 rating on an average of 20:10 of time on ice per game.

McCabe is in the second season of a five-year contract he signed with Toronto that carries a salary cap hit of just $4.153 million per season. The 33-year-old from Wisconsin joined the Leafs during the 2022-23 season as a trade deadline acquisition from the Chicago Blackhawks.

If McCabe is forced to miss additional time, he would be the second regular Toronto defenseman to be sidelined, as Chris Tanev is out on a week-to-week basis with an upper-body injury. Troy Stecher has been bumped up to the second pairing to fill in for Tanev alongside Morgan Rielly, with rookie Marshall Rifai and veteran Oliver Ekman-Larsson forming the third pair.

Tuesday night’s win followed up a Monday night victory over the San Jose Sharks for the Leafs, and the quick two-game run has improved their record to 5-4-2 while flipping their goal differential from negative to positive. While it’s too early to have a good read on the playoff race, Toronto currently holds the second wild card spot by points, though they would be out of the playoff picture by points percentage.

The Leafs will look to run their winning streak to three games on Thursday night when another team looking to bounce back from a brutal 2025-26 season visits Scotiabank arena in the New York Rangers.