The Toronto Maple Leafs will finally play the Columbus Blue Jackets tonight in game one of their best-of-five series.
The Toronto Maple Leafs series against the Blue Jackets is perhaps the most anticipated series in the history of either team.
Not because anyone particularly expects a classic, but because we’ve had months and months to prepare, wait for, and think about this series.
In my opinion, the Blue Jackets defense is insanely overrated based on a the fluky nature of goaltending.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, meanwhile are underrated due to an injury filled season, the collapse of the team under Babcock and the need to change coaches and learn a new system on the fly.
The Leafs should have no problem winning this series, but then again, anything can happen in the NHL.
Toronto Maple Leafs News
The big news ahead of today’s game is that rookie ( and player who, had he been born four days later than he was would not yet be drafted) Nick Robertson is going to make his NHL debut.
Surprising absolutely no one, Sheldon Keefe confirms Nick Robertson will play tomorrow for #Leafs against Columbus
— Kristen Shilton (@kristen_shilton) August 1, 2020
This is obviously the right move for the Leafs, and its great to see them ignoring tradition and doing the sensible thing.
Unfortunately, the same can not be said about their glaring error of dressing Cody Ceci and leaving Rasmus Sandin on the bench. The less said about that nonsense the better.
Here is hoping Ceci proves me wrong.
Obviously your personal play-in round predictions are 100% correct.
— JFresh (@JFreshHockey) July 31, 2020
But if you're curious what some predictive models say about the upcoming Eastern Conference matchups: pic.twitter.com/eW1E9zR00P
Despite Ceci, the Toronto Maple Leafs are very heavily favored to win this series by predictive models using statistics to predict the future.
Of course, your standard hockey analyst is bound to overrate the Jackets because of their defense and underrate the Leafs because of theirs, but if you’re a fan of the Leafs, the stats say you’re in luck.
Only one of the models doesn’t heavily favor the Leafs (it favors them only slightly) while two of them consider the Leafs the best bet of all four eastern series to get to the next round.
And, if you ignore some of the narratives and just read the names on each teams rosters, that makes sense.
Anyways, I really hope the Leafs have a great game tonight, but even if they don’t its just cool that hockey is finally back.
I was pretty skeptical that they would ever get to this point, so I hope it works out and we can enjoy a few months of hockey now.
I predict that these will be the hardest playoffs to ever win, and that the Toronto Maple Leafs will be the team to hoist the Cup two months from now.