Toronto Maple Leafs: The Race to 60 Back On – Auston Matthews Back

The Toronto Maple Leafs, with nothing to play for, and the regular season winding down, understandably gave Auston Matthews a few games off to rest up for the playoffs.

While we don’t know what injury the Toronto Maple Leafs best player of all-time was dealing with, the fact that they are going to let him play tells you all you need to know.

Clearly the Leafs wouldn’t let him play if he wasn’t 100%.

And with a game against the Panthers tonight, what better time to bring him back, score twice to hit 60, and clinch home-ice advantage for the first round?

Any combo of Leafs wins and Tampa losses equaling four points will clinch home-ice for the Leafs.  They could have done that in one fell swoop by beating Tampa on Thursday, but perhaps the less said about that travesty of a game the better.

Boston’s max points are now 109, meaning that any point the Leafs get, or Boston loses, will allow the Leafs to ensure Boston cannot catch them.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Florida Panthers

The first place Panthers have not had to dress Erik Kallgren, Petr Mrazek, and Michael Hutchinson for 34 games, and yet they are just ten points up on the Leafs.

The Leafs actually have more regulation wins, and  vastly outplaying your goaltending (the Leafs rank 29th in the NHL thanks to playing sub. 900 goalies for 43% of their games) is a key sign of future success.

Overall, even with Florida having a 10 points lead, I would think the Leafs are pretty clearly the better team.  The stats, the rosters, everything is in the Leafs favor, and I think Florida would be by far the easiest team the Leafs could face in the playoffs – to my mind at least, Boston, Carolina and Tampa represent far tougher matchups.

In other news, Jake Muzzin will again miss tonight’s game, while Rasmus Sandin has started to skate. It’s probably too much to hope for, but if the Leafs had all eight NHL defenseman on their roster healthy to start the season, that would be an incredible advantage.

About a month or so ago, I was curious about how Rasmus Sandin and Timothy Liljegren were posting some of the best numbers numbers by any defensive pairing in the league.

The argument against the Leafs having actual good players was that the numbers were inflated due to their sheltered minutes, but when I looked into it, no other competitive team had a 3rd pairing putting up anything close to what the Leafs were getting from theirs.

Before the Leafs acquired Mark Giordano, and Ilya Lyubushkin, I thought they had the best blue-line in the NHL, but now I am sure that is the case.  They may not have someone at the very high-end like Hedman or Makar, but their overall depth is incredible.

Anyways, it’s Leafs vs Panthers tonight and Campbell is in net and Matthews is back.   Good times!