Toronto Maple Leafs Look to Rebound vs Rangers

After losing to Columbus, the Toronto Maple Leafs come back to the Air Canada Centre to take on the New York Rangers.

The Toronto Maple Leafs really need a win tonight against the Rangers after a frustrating loss against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Mitch Marner’s Hot Streak

Toronto Maple Leafs /

Mitch Marner continuing his hot streak. In the last two games, Marner has had 2 goals and 3 assists, and was an 80% possession player against Columbus. Look for Marner to continue his streak tomorrow night against the Rangers.

So far this season, Marner has maintained 1st line production even while being snake bitten in the goal-scoring dept. Currently, he has 4 goals and 21 assists in 36 games.

The worst statistic of all for Marner is his shooting percentage. His shooting percentage currently sits at 5.4 percent while last season his shooting percentage was 10.8%. It’s even worse if you isolate that to just 5v5.

Hopefully his play in the last two games against the Carolina Hurricanes and the Blue Jackets will help spark a surge in his offensive game.

Auston Matthews Back At Practice

Yesterday, Toronto Maple Leafs fans received some more positive news. Auston Matthews took part in his first practice since suffering from concussion-like symptoms on December 9th against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Matthews will play tonight against the Rangers.

In an interview with the press after the Toronto Maple Leafs practice on Friday, Matthews addressed when fans would likely see him back on the ice at the Air Canada Centre.

Stellar Henrik

On the other side of the ice, the Rangers are coming off a shoot-out loss against the New Jersey Devils. The Devils pounded Rangers’ goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist with 48 shots.

Unfortunately for Lundqvist, former teammate and former Toronto Maple Leaf, Brian Boyle scored the game winning shoot-out goal to put the Devils on top of the Rangers.

Aside from Thursday’s loss against the Devils, Lundqvist has had a stellar season. So far this season, he has posted a 2.59 goals against average. He’s really been stepping up for the Rangers and being a more dominant net-minder as last season he had a goals against average of 2.74. In addition, Lundqvist has also raised his save percentage in comparison to last season. This season, his save percentage is up by .11.

Rangers Sluggish Offense

Let’s move to the Rangers offense.

This season, Alain Vigneault, the Rangers’ head coach has had difficulty getting his boys to score.

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Aside from Michael Grabner, who is having an unreal season with 17 goals. Grabner is the only Ranger in the top 50 goal scorers in league. Plus, I doubt the Grabner keeps up his stellar offensive play. It’s been a while since Grabner was an offensive demon. Grabner’s 2010-2011 campaign was the last and only time that he’s scored more than 30 goals in one season. He’s so inconsistent that I just can’t visualize him continuing to have much success this season.

Plain and simple, the Rangers lack scorers.

Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Pavel Buchnevich have been scoring goals as well, but they aren’t scoring enough. In total, the three skaters have produced 33 goals. Ten goals more than the league’s leading scorer, Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals.

Unfortunate for the Rangers, Rick Nash has continued to decline. He hasn’t scored more than 40 goals since his 2014-2015 campaign. This season he is on pace to score approximately 20 goals.

If Rangers fans were expecting Nash to have a great season as his contract expires, unfortunately their dreams have been shattered.

Predictions

I’ll be blunt, my last few predictions have been dead wrong. In my last game preview, I predicted that the Leafs would beat the Carolina Hurricanes 2-1.

But, I bought the wrong crystal ball and the Leafs thrashed the Hurricanes 8-1. I’m probably going to be wrong. But, I’m going to predict the final score anyway.

Next: Andersen has been Christmas Miracle

I predict that the Leafs will beat the Rangers 4-2 and Mitch Marner will continue his hot streak.

stats from Naturalstatrick.com

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