Leafs Notebook: Ilya Mikheyev’s impact play, a contributing fourth line, and roster-crunch decisions

Toronto Maple Leafs celebrationNine games into their season, the Toronto Maple Leafs are sporting a good-but-not-great record of 5-3-1.

With so many changes to the lineup and a relatively tough schedule, it’s understandable. To keep things in perspective, they haven’t exactly pulled a Dallas Stars to start the new campaign.

If you look at the year 2019 as a whole, though, it has been decidedly average. The Leafs are 25-20-7 since the turn of the calendar with a plus-seven goal differential. On raw points, it’s good for 15th in the league. Their power play is 13th and their penalty kill is 22nd. Now, most of this is from the second half of last season and the team has a bunch of new faces this…