Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Come Up Big Tonight

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadians face off tonight for the second game of the series with the Leafs trailing down 1-0.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have plenty to be proud of after the first game given the circumstances of Thursday night’s game despite losing.

After seeing what happened to their captain, it is difficult to shift the blame on anyone for not being in the right headspace. It was awful to watch Tavares go down like he did. Overall the Leafs did not have a bad game, they outplayed the Habs for the most part with a few bad mistakes and Price showing up big for the playoffs as usual.

For Leaf fans, it’s certainly concerning to see Price start off that strong, but I don’t even see Price being able to sustain a 972Sv% moving forward.

Tonight’s Toronto Maple Leafs vs Montreal Canadiens Game

Even with playoff Price, moving forward it would be difficult to see Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner being shut down again. For perspective in the 2021 regular season Marner only when pointless two games in a row ONE time.

This is Matthews time to show the casual NHL fans how talented he truly is. The broadcast saw over 8 million people just from Canada watch last night’s game, this is a hockey night in Canada Montreal-Toronto matchup, everyone will be watching.

Price and Matthews will see a lot of each other again.

Let’s go over the other newly constructed lines that Sheldon Keefe has put together going into the second game of the series.

The new second line consists of Galchenyuk-Foligno-Nylander. Foligno has not played centre in a while but he has done it before and here is what Sheldon Keefe had to say about it, from TSN.

"We don’t have an abundance of options   Nick has played a lot of centre. He played a lot of centre in Columbus before he came here this season. Even when he plays left wing, Nick ends up spending a lot of time playing low in the defensive zone. He is usually high in the offensive zone. He is usually the first guy back. He is very comfortable playing down low in our own end. It is a natural fit."

Given Foligno is so committed defensively it is a good balance to play with Galchenyuk who is not the greatest defensive player but can bring some of the offense that Foligno lacks. Galchenyuk is a very skilled player and there is a chance that he can put a few pucks in the net against his old team.

Nylander will need to do more of what we saw on Thursday night from him for this line to really spark. Willy is such a strong puck carrier, he can shoot, he can pass at an elite level, and he had the jets going last game hitting players and being relentless on the backcheck.

Pierre Engvall was also added into the lineup for Riley Nash and he is set to add some more speed in transition which is something that Nash is not capable of. In Engvall’s last five games of the season, he was on a hot streak with 4 points in 5 games after a tough stretch without bringing much offensively.

Engvall isn’t particularly good offensively but he is more capable of scoring goals with his strong wrister or off a breakaway with his speed. Nash would make sense playing against a player such as Crosby, but the Habs don’t have any player such as Crosby to shut down.

Instead, the Habs have players like Josh Anderson and Tatar who thrive on scoring off the rush, and Engvall’s speed can neutralizing them better.  That being said it is hard to have high expectations for the Engvall-Kerfoot-Mikheyev line., them holding their own against the Habs would be a success in itself.

I still advocate heavily for the Leafs to go back to the Hyman-Engvall-Mikheyev line, that was a  phenomenal line.

Moving onto the vintage line of Simmonds-Spezza-Thornton, they are all going to have to be better. These veterans were brought in to make a difference in the playoffs and so far they have not done much on the positive side of things.

Final Thoughts

As far as defensemen go, there is not too much to be worried about besides Sandin improving on the tough first game he had the other night. The coaching staff seems confident in Sandin’s ability, though there will be a close eye on the 21-year-old tonight.

Jack Campbell had a maintenance day on Friday after having a positive start to the series. There is some level of concern with regards to Campbell needing to take a day off, hopefully, the day off helped whatever issue he was facing and his injury wasn’t reaggravated.

The Leafs are still favored to win in this series and they are still the better team without Tavares. Even though Price is a stellar goalie, the Toronto Maple Leafs have some star players still in the lineup.

It is a Saturday night Hockey Night in Canada playoff game with two of the most classical franchises playing against each other, this is going to be a huge game.

The Leafs have the ability to change the momentum of this series and win this for John.

#WinItForJT.