Toronto Maple Leafs Face Must Win vs. Provincial Rival

The Toronto Maple Leafs take on the Ottawa Senators in Ottawa at 7 pm tonight.

Ottawa is currently 19-21-11 and on a one, game-winning steak with a win over the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday night and are 3-4-3 in their last 10. While the Toronto Maple Leafs lost Thursday night to Dallas and are 5-4-1 in their last 10 games.

The Leafs currently hold the final playoff spot in the Atlantic Division.

The Senators are in second last place, and have been eliminated from playoff contention for months.

Important Toronto Maple Leafs vs Ottawa Senators Storylines

There are a few storylines heading into the great battle of Ontario tonight, where Ottawa will undoubtedly try their hardest as the underdogs to make a story out of tonight’s game.

Especially given how many former Leafs are on the roster with the likes of Ron Hainsey, Nikita Zaitsev, Tyler Ennis, Connor Brown, and even their head coach DJ Smith who was the Leafs former assistant.

Lines going into tonight’s game

@HennyTweets has just tweeted out the expected lineup for tonight from the morning skate where Sheldon Keefe will go with the Nylander-Matthews-Marner line at least to start the game off.

I am in favor of Keefe direction with trying out this trio because there is little downside to trying it out, even if you may prefer the lines to be more diverse.

If the line begins to struggle, then the team can simply go back to the Matthews-Marner and Tavares-Nylander duos that we know will put forth results.

The trying out new things has been among my favorite things about Sheldon Keefe since he has suited up as the head coach and on the contrary, this was the largest criticism of Mike Babcock.

On another note, Jack Campbell will also start tonight against the Senators on the first game of the back to back.

I find this as suitable for the Leafs chances of getting the most out of this back to back because it will give Freddie an extra day of rest and Freddie will play the better team in Buffalo (even if they aren’t anything special).

Ottawa vs Toronto

Overall Toronto easily dominates Ottawa in every category of the game besides goaltending this season where the Leafs goalies have struggled mightily.

Ottawa is a below-average 5v5 team with a 48.63xGF% which is better than you may expect them to be given their roster.  As far as special teams go Ottawa has the second-worst power play and third-worst penalty kill in the league.

Toronto’s 5v5 game has been stellar since Keefe came in as head coach so I expect them to dominate.

Toronto’s powerplay has struggled recently, I suspect that is because they are playing Zach Hyman there who as much as I love him, is not a good player to play on the powerplay.

While on the penalty kill the Leafs have been pretty good, I believe Engvall has a lot to do with that success.

All Data from Evolving Hockey 

I expect Auston Mattews to dominate tonight and further show why he is a hart trophy candidate especially given Ottawa coach DJ Smith stated he will be matched up with Zaitsev. 

Using the savvy game predictors, moneypuck has the Leafs winning tonight at 56.6%, but this game may be closer than you think.

As it is for every game these days, a win for the Toronto Maple Leafs tonight could be the deciding factor of them making the playoffs or not, so we can label this game against Ottawa as a must-win.