The Toronto Maple Leafs will take on the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight at the ACC.
The Toronto Maple Leafs lost a hard fought game in overtime to the Lightning a couple of weeks ago.
And of course, who can forget about last spring when the Leafs finally won four games in the first round only to have it turn out that the fourth one didn’t count. Game seven saw the Leafs play one of their best games ever, but future first ballot hall of famer Andrei Vasilevskiy also had one of his best games ever, and here we are.
Andre .9-3000 is the likely starter tonight while the Leafs will counter with the Murman, Matt Murray.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs The Lightning
The Lightning come into this game having won five games in a row.
The Leafs recently lose consecutive games in regulation for the first time all year. The standings might say otherwise, but I would wager large sums of money that an omnipotent narrator would say these are the two best teams in hockey.
The first round series they played last year was great hockey, and this years lone game was one of the most entertaining games we’ve seen this season to date. I would expect nothing less tonight.
The Leafs may get an injured player back tonight in Calle Jarnkrok. Now that I think of it, I may have completely forgot to include him in our pre Christmas Injury Update. If he’s back it won’t matter, and if he’s not, I guess I’ll have to go update it!
Jarnkrok, who I think will play, is going to lineup with Nylander and Tavares in place of the traded Denis Malgin. Personally I’d rather see Malgin there than Jarnkrok.
Jarnkrok has nine points in 25 games so far this year, half his minutes have been with Engval and they have gotten good results together. His other half have been horrendous.
Overall Jarnkrok has the lowest expected goals percentage on the Leafs, and his overall WAR percentile ranking is around 30%. He has been a major disappointment so far. He is, however, a pretty good player, and should do better going forward. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
It is worth mentioning that Pierre Engvall is a much better player and is much more deserving of playing with Tavares, and that he has yet again been passed over.
Anyways, it’s Leafs vs Tampa and I will predict a 4-3 Leafs victory.