Tonight, the Toronto Maple Leafs take on the Buffalo Sabres at the Air Canada Centre.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are fresh off a win against the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night. They’ll look to grab a third consecutive win tonight against a Sabres squad that hasn’t won a game since March 17th.
Due to the stellar play of the Toronto Maple Leafs as of late, Mike Babcock has continued to roll with the same lines, per a report from TSN’s Kristen Shilton.
#Leafs lines at practice:
— Kristen Shilton (@kristen_shilton) March 25, 2018
Hyman-Matthews-Nylander
Marleau-Kadri-Marner
van Riemsdyk-Bozak-Brown
Johnsson-Plekanec-Kapanen
Leivo, Martin
Rielly-Hainsey
Gardiner-Zaitsev
Dermott-Polak
Moore-Carrick
As of late, I’ve been very impressed with the play of William Nylander. In Nylander’s last five games, he has posted 3 goals and an assist. Hopefully, Nylander can continue his hot streak tonight against the Sabres.
Nylander is not the only Maple Leafs forward turning heads. Mitch Marner has been nothing but outstanding as well. Marner is truly excelling with Nazem Kadri and Patrick Marleau by his side. Marner has totaled 1 goal and 5 assists in his last five games.
Buffalo Sabres
Let’s jump to the Sabres.
Unfortunately for Sabres’ fans, they have one the worst teams in the NHL. They are dead last in the NHL in GF/GP with 2.31 goals. Also, the Sabres have a 3.28 GA/GP, 17.1 PP%, 78.1 PK% and 30.9 Shots/GP.
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The key to beating the Sabres quad is maintaining puck possession in their defensive zone and forcing takeaways in the neutral zone. As mentioned above, the Sabres don’t score many goals so as long as you can keep them out of the defensive zone the likelihood of the Toronto Maple Leafs picking a third consecutive win goes up.
Fortunately for Buffalo, their young all-star, Jack Eichel is back in the lineup. The last time these two teams on March 15th, the Sabres were without Eichel as he was still working to recover from his ankle injury. With Eichel back in the lineup, the Sabres are much stronger down the middle as well as Eichel’s presence takes a lot of pressure off of Ryan O’Reilly.
Even though the Sabres have a healthy Eichel back, they are still injury plagued. Zach Bogosian and Jake McCabe are banged up. This means that the Sabres will have to rely on defensemen like Brendan Guhle and Casey Nelson who have spent most of the season with the Sabres’ AHL squad, the Rochester Americans.
If the Toronto Maple Leafs can shut down Eichel, O’Reilly and the Sabres defense, they should prevail.
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Recap & Notes
Based on the injury situation in Buffalo, the Toronto Maple Leafs should be able to beat the Sabres. My prediction is that the Toronto Maple Leafs will win by a score of 6-2. A Leafs win, followed by either a New Jersey or Florida loss in either of their next games will clinch Leafs a playoff birth.
Puck drop will be at approximately 7:05 pm EST. The game can be found on TSN4 in the Toronto market.
stats from NHL.com