The Toronto Maple Leafs seek to climb the standings against Minnesota.
The Toronto Maple Leafs look to start a winning streak against the Minnesota Wild, as they start a difficult campaign for the following 2 weeks. Of the 7 upcoming games, 6 are part of a back-to-back series, brutal to say the least.
The heavy workload the Toronto Maple Leafs face makes a good start that much more important against Minnesota.
For the Minnesota Wild, the game against the Toronto Maple Leafs tonight concludes a back-to-back series for them, as they faced off against Ottawa last night, picking up their first win of the season in 5 games.
The Minnesota Wild
So far in the season, Minnesota has struggled to win games, much like the Toronto Maple Leafs, though in a lesser extent. The significant difference between Minnesota and Toronto is that the Toronto Maple Leafs played good hockey in games they lost.
In the first four games, the Minnesota Wild struggled to get their offence going. Ranking 27th in goals for in the league with 10 goals, with an average of 32 shots per game in their first four, giving them a shooting percentage of just 7.8%.
Whereas the Toronto Maple Leafs rank 2nd in goals for with 24 goals scored (to be fair, they have played 2 more games, but I don’t see Minnesota notch 14 goals in their back-to-back series) – with a shooting percentage of 11.4%.
On the other end of the ice, Minnesota hasn’t found much success either yet. Coming in last nights game against Ottawa, the Minnesota Wilds held a save percentage of 0.840%, second-worst of the league, only ahead of the Los Angeles Kings and far below the league average of 0.900%. (per hockey-reference).
A big contributing factor to the Wilds struggles in the crease has been Devan Dubnyk who played the first four games. Luckily for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Dubnyk is expected to play against Toronto tomorrow because back-up goaltender Alex Stalock minded the net in Ottawa last night.
When the Leafs utilize their speed, tiring the Wild who played last night and fire the puck towards the net as much as they can, they should be able to exploit the struggling Dubnyk.
With the Wild coming off a game last night, and the Toronto Maple Leafs well rested, all the ingredients are there for an absolute beatdown. Add in the fact that the Leafs have Tavares and Marner who are overdue, and we could easily see a track-meet tonight.
It appears that, as is tradition, Mike Babcock will go with Freddie Andersen tonight, even though tomorrow’s game appears to be a much tougher affair.