Sheldon Keefe changes his tune on the Mitch Marner injury.

The Toronto Maple Leafs had a very notable absence from their morning skate on Monday when once again star forward Mitch Marner was nowhere to be seen.

Marner has been out of action since suffering an injury back in early March against the Boston Bruins, an injury that was initially reported as "day to day" by Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe. It has now been 11 days since Marner was injured however and it has become clear that the original diagnosis from Keefe was way off. On Monday morning Keefe was singing a very different tune.

Gone was the talk of day to day and instead Keefe would reveal that Marner's recovery was not progressing as planned.

"It hasn’t been responding the way that they had hoped," admitted Keefe on Monday.

To make matters worse, it now sounds like the Maple Leafs are planning to give Marner even more time to recover given his lack of progress with the injury.

"So we’re just stepping back a bit with it," added Keefe.

This of course makes a ton of sense given that the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs are right around the corner.

The injury that Marner is believed to have suffered is a high ankle sprain, an injury that makes it incredibly difficult to predict recovery time given such a wide variance of cases. The return from this type of injury ranges from 0 games missed all the way up to 65 games missed, and the Maple Leafs are going to have to hope that Marner doesn't end up on the high end of that scale.