Toronto Maple Leafs: Matthews Out Against Pens

Tonight, the Toronto Maple Leafs will be without Auston Matthews as they take on the red hot Pittsburgh Penguins.

Yesterday, Kristen Shilton of TSN tweeted out a video of Matthews practicing at the MasterCard Centre. Matthews has been skating solo in non-contact drills. It seems that Mike Babcock and the Toronto Maple Leafs want to ease Matthews back in. Matthews has been suffering from shoulder pain and with the Toronto Maple Leafs having a hold on third place in Eastern Conference, Babcock doesn’t feel the urge to pressure Matthews into coming back too soon.

In a follow up tweet, Shilton shared that Matthews was on the ice for approximately 52 minutes. Hopefully, Matthews proved to Babcock and the trainers that he is healthy enough to return to practice. If Matthews is healthy enough and returns to practice, he might be able to return sometime next week. The Toronto Maple Leafs have a tough matchup against the Dallas Stars on Wednesday night and could certainly use Matthews’ skill-set.

Toronto Maple Leafs

After a tough 5-3 loss in Buffalo, Babcock made some line changes in practice. Yesterday, Shilton tweeted out the Toronto Maple Leafs lines at practice. The biggest change that Babcock made was moving Leo Komarov up to the top line to play alongside Nazem Kadri and Patrick Marleau.

Personally, I don’t like the decision to move Komarov a top line. Yes, he did have 2 goals and 5 SOG against the Sabres, and he’s the Leafs best defensive player, but I still don’t like it. This season, Komarov has 46 blocks and 203 hits. Additionally, he’s fourth on the Toronto Maple Leafs in takeaways with 43. It just puzzles me that Babcock believes that Komarov is a fit on the top line.

After moving Komarov to the top line, Babcock assigned Mitch Marner to play alongside William Nylander and Zach Hyman. Personally, I love this line. It’s line comprised of play-making and speedy forwards. This line will hopefully be able to dazzle against Pittsburgh’s tough defensive core.

The other changes to the Toronto Maple Leafs offensive lines include Connor Brown playing on the third line, Josh Leivo back in the lineup and Kasperi Kapanen dropped down to the fourth line.

On the defensive side, Babcock decided to roll with a more physical bottom line pairing as he chose to go with Roman Polak over Connor Carrick.

Pittsburgh Penguins

As of late, the Pittsburgh Penguins have been hot. They have won their last three games and will be looking to grab a win in Toronto before heading home to play Dallas.

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Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Phil Kessel have been leading the charge for Pittsburgh. In the last three games, they have combined for 4 goals and 10 assists. The biggest issue for the Toronto Maple Leafs is that all three all-stars play on different lines. This means that all three Maple Leafs  defensive pairings will be need to be alert and aggressive to in order to shut them down.

In the defensive zone, Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin have been nothing but stellar for the Penguins. In away games, Letang and Dumoulin both have posted impressive corsi-for percentages this season. To counter-act the Letang-Dumoulin pairing, Babcock will likely opt to use his second line of Hyman-Nylander-Marner. Perhaps, the speedy second line will be able to skate past Letang and Dumoulin and put pressure on Matt Murray.

Prediction

Without Matthews in the lineup for the Toronto Maple Leafs, this is a tough matchup. Personally, I believe that the Toronto Maple Leafs will prevail, but it will be a close game. As long as the Toronto Maple Leafs stay out of the penalty box, they should be able to grab a win. The Penguins lead the league in PP%, so Babcock will need to keep a watchful eye on Polak and Kadri.

Next: What to Do With Matthews?

My prediction is that the Toronto Maple Leafs will finally end their losing streak and beat the Penguins 4 to 3 at the Air Canada Centre.

stats from NHL.com, hockey-reference.com and naturalstattrick.com