The Jeremy Lauzon hit that just cost the Maple Leafs Oliver Ekman-Larsson

Oliver Ekman-Larsson left Thursday night's Maple Leafs loss in Vegas after a Jeremy Lauzon hit sent his head into the ice.

He didn't come back. The Leafs went on to drop a 4-3 shootout decision in their first road game of the season.

The sequence was ugly. Lauzon pinned the veteran along the end boards near the Vegas net, and his skates flipped up toward the glass before his head met the ice.

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Here's the part that stings in the Leafs' locker room. Lauzon finished the night without a single penalty minute, logging 15:59 of ice time.

For a play that ended with a 35-year-old defenseman's head bouncing off the ice, that's a miss. The Leafs will want somebody at the league office taking a long look at it.

Ekman-Larsson logged 15:22 on the night and was charged with four penalty minutes of his own.

Through five games, he's still looking for his first point. He carries a -1 rating into a stretch where the Leafs suddenly need every body on the back end.

Jim Hiller has no seventh defenseman to turn to in Denver

That's the real problem. The Leafs have used exactly six defensemen this season, and all six have dressed in every game.

Morgan Rielly, Darren Raddysh, Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe and Troy Stecher are the other five. No seventh defenseman has seen a single shift yet.

Running a blue line that thin is like driving through the Rockies with no spare in the trunk. One flat and you're stuck on the shoulder.

And the Rockies are exactly where this road trip goes next. The Leafs visit Colorado on Saturday, a club that dropped seven goals on Calgary the same night.

Colorado has 23 goals through four games. That's a +12 goal differential lining up across from a team that might be a defenseman short.

So who soaks up the minutes? Raddysh already carried the heaviest load in Vegas at 24:45.

McCabe wasn't far behind at 23:32. Pile more onto those two at altitude, against that kind of attack, and the third period gets dicey fast.

The Leafs also got outshot 43-24 in Vegas. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 40 of those and the team still left the desert with one point.

Ryan Craig's club, meanwhile, sits at 4-1-0 and rides a three-game win streak into Saturday's date with Los Angeles.

At 2-2-1 with a -1 goal differential, the Leafs don't have much cushion to absorb a lost defenseman. Hiller has until Saturday's puck drop to sort out his blue line, with Ekman-Larsson's status hanging over the whole trip.

The two teams meet again December 12 in Toronto. Lauzon will be on that ice, and that room has a long memory.

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