Toronto Maple Leafs: Game Day Headlines vs Vegas

The Toronto Maple Leafs are in Las Vegas tonight for another holiday showdown with the Golden Knights.

It’s going to be a late one tonight, folks. The Leafs will take on the quietly thriving Golden Knights tonight at 10:00 PM EST – a start time which, in all honesty, should be illegal.

Nevertheless, it’ll be an intriguing test for a Leafs team that’s won 6 of their last 8 and appears to be rounding into form. After a thoroughly subpar month of January, Toronto is now one of the hottest teams in the NHL and, recent success aside, will need all the points they can get with Boston nipping at their heels behind them in the standings.

Let’s gear this one up.

Rielly – Hainsey Forever, Apparently

In honour of Valentine’s Day, Mike Babcock seems intent on reaffirming his undying love for the Morgan Rielly – Ron Hainsey top pairing that has never worked before and, shockingly, will not work now.

It’s getting to the point where Babcock’s stubbornness has reached an unbearable degree. Kyle Dubas specifically acquired Jake Muzzin for the purpose of giving the Leafs a legitimate top pair, and it took less than 10 games for Babcock to revert back to the clearly inferior option of the past.

Hainsey is almost 40-years-old. His body simply cannot withstand the rigours of playing first pair minutes over an 82-game season and potentially 4 lengthy playoff rounds. It just can’t. For Babcock to continue pounding this square peg into its round hole, in full defiance of the superior options that have been afforded to him, is indefensible.

There’s no way around it. The lineup may be Babcock’s domain, but it’s approaching the point where Dubas may need to intervene to prevent his coach from grinding his veteran defenceman into a fine powder before the postseason even begins.

Andreas Johnsson Off the Fourth Line

To the delight of fans everywhere, the Leafs line rushes in practice yesterday hinted toward the possibility of the team’s best left winger spending his second consecutive game off of the fourth line. Hallelujiah!

How Andreas Johnsson ever dropped to the very bottom rung of the lineup, we may never know.

Johnsson has been on fire as of late, with 30 points in 50 games thus far including 10 in his last 12, all while playing the majority of his minutes alongside Frederik Gauthier and Par Lindholm – arguably the team’s two most offensively challenged members. That’s incredibly impressive and speaks to Johnsson’s ability to create offence predominately by himself, regardless of the quality of teammates around him.

If the lines listed above manage to stick into tonight, the Leafs will be capable of rolling out a third line featuring Johnsson – Kadri – Nylander that is set to give Gerrard Gallant matchup headaches lasting into next week. For as poorly as he’s handled the defence, this signifies another step toward Mike Babcock truly maximizing the staggering offensive depth currently at his disposal.

It’s taken a while, but he’s getting there.

According to Daily Faceoff, it looks to be Frederik Andersen against Marc-Andre Fleury in net tonight, which, at the very least, should be an entertaining goalie matchup.

Hope you have some coffee ready. Puck drops at 10.

Thanks for reading!