The Toronto Maple Leafs will take on the San Jose Sharks tonight at the Scotia Bank Arena.
Your Toronto Maple Leafs will welcome Auston Matthews back to the lineup after a 14 game absence. Matthews missed 14 games with a shoulder injury. The Leafs were 9-5 with him out of the lineup.
Frederick Gauthier exits the lineup and heads to the pressbox to make room for Matthews.
It seems that the Leafs will reunite Matthews with Marleau and Kapanen. Per Lindholm heads to the fourth line and Kadri will skate with Brown and Johnsson. All according to dailyfaceoff.com.
San Jose Sharks
The Leafs currently sit at 17-8 and are in fourth place in the NHL. They are third place in their own division, but what can you do. As for the Sharks, who the Leafs beat rather easily a couple of weeks ago when they swept their west coast trip, they are tied for first in the Pacific Division with 29 points. Though they are behind the Leafs by a few points, the Sharks are one of the NHL’s best teams and tonight will be a difficult game.
San Jose has currently lost two in a row and will be looking to take revenge on the Leafs for the aforementioned loss of a couple of weeks ago.
The starting goalies will be Aaron Dell and Frederik Andersen. It should be pointed out here that Andersen was amazing Monday against the Bruins when he stopped 38 of 40 shots and almost single-handedly won the game for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Andersen has been on fire this season and would most likely earn a Vezina nomination if the season were to end today.
Andersen has a crazy .944 save percentage this month!
Of course the big story in this one, really the only story, is the return of Auston Matthews. The Leafs are nearly in first place and Matthews has missed over half the season, so with him back they should be almost unstoppable. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way, but the fact is, Matthews is arguably the second best player in the NHL, he has ten goals in 11 games (although he left one of those games with an injury) and was playing the best hockey of his career before his injury.
Despite missing 14 games the Leafs have 57 games remaining, so my 65 goal prediction isn’t completely out of the question! Of course for that to be true, he’d have to be basically the best goal scorer of all-time, and of course Patrick Laine is out there trying to take his title, but who knows? It could happen!
Bottom line: Matthews is back and that is awesome.
Enjoy the game.