Toronto Maple Leafs Look For A Big Two Points in Vancouver

The Toronto Maple Leafs are set to take on the Vancouver Canucks tonight in their second and final matchup.

Only this time, it’s in Vancouver and the puck drops at 9 PM EST. The last time the 2 teams met was on January 5th, when the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Canucks easily, 5-0.

The starting goaltenders for tonight’s matchup are set to be Frederik Andersen, who is coming off a huge win against the Western Conference-leading Calgary Flames. And for the Canucks, it looks like it will be Jakob Markstrom, who happens to be coming off a 3-0 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights.

Now, one thing that’s very interesting is when the 2 teams last played, Trevor Moore, scored his first career NHL goal.

4th Line Action

And tonight, we could see some more from Moore, as he’s set to play his first ever game in Vancouver. This time, he’ll be on a line that Leaf fans have never seen before.

The 4th line is set to be Trevor Moore, Nic Petan and Tyler Ennis and fans are calling it “the Smurf line”, with all 3 players being listed under 6 feet tall. And with Petan in and Frederik Gauthier out, it’ll be interesting to see how much ice-time they’ll get.

It was a huge game for the fourth line on Monday against the Flames, as Ennis recorded his first career NHL hat-trick and Trevor Moore had 2 assists. So, we might see a lot of this 4th line tonight against the Canucks.

It’s also likely that we’ll see a familiar friend as well in this game. Josh Leivo is set to play his first game against the Leafs after being traded to the Canucks on December 3rd and even admitted to having a little extra motivation in facing his former team.

In 34 games with Vancouver this season, Leivo has 8 goals and 6 assists. He’s playing on a line with Brock Boeser and Ellias Pettersson, and since joining the team, the big line has combined for 78 points. But, when Vancouver visited Toronto, they didn’t get to see Pettersson play.

So, this will be his first-ever game against the Leafs.

We might get to see the Auston Matthews line matchup against the Pettersson line, which would be one Calder winning centre in Matthews vs. Calder winning hopeful Pettersson. And if that’s the matchup, it’ll be tough for both teams to put the puck in the back of the net.