Toronto Maple Leafs: Luke Schenn Back as Hurricanes Come to Town

The Toronto Maple Leafs will host the Carolina Hurricanes tonight at the Air Canada Centre.

The Carolina Hurricanes are possibly the NHL’s best team and are in direct competition with the Colorado Avalanche, Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto Maple Leafs for that title.

Sure, the Bruins are the luckiest team, but Carolina out-performs their much lower save and shooting percentages, making a good case that they are the best team.

The Toronto Maple Leafs – who, last time I checked – were the team most affected by injuries this season, also out-perform their percentages and would probably be quite a bit higher in the standings if they hadn’t had to play four different goalies, and play all. year without Nick Robertson and Jake Muzzin.

Tonight two of the top teams in the league will go head to head, and that is always fun.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Carolina Hurricanes

The Canes just got the worst possible news in that their best player, Andrei Svechnikov, will miss the remainder of the season and playoffs.

To put that in perspective, not a single team added a player even close to as good as he is at the Trade deadlione.

Tonight’s game will feature another insane lineup by Sheldon Keefe.

There will be seven defenseman, which no one likes, and Justin Holl will sit, which is fine.  Luke Schenn will be back after missing a week or so while his wife had a baby.

The problem for me is with the forwards where the Leafs inexplicably are running with Alex Kerfoot on the top line.

The bottom of the lineup looks terrinle with a “bottom five” of Kampf, Lafferty, Acciari, Aston-Reese and Jarnkrok.  Just absolutely no offense from those players.

This team will look so much better when Ryan O’Reilly is their 3rd line centre, and Matthews knies or Bobby McMann, or maybe both are dressing.

It’s really too bad about Nick Robertson, I think he’s have 30 goals skating in the top six all season, and he’d bring a different look to the lineup as a guy who never quits and has one of the league’s best shots.

As for tonight’s game, I think the Tornoto Maple Leafs will play a lot better than they did against Colorado and Buffalo earlier in the week, and they should be able to take advantage of a team whose best player is out and whose second best player is really slumping.

Let us once again predict an Auston Matthews hat trick and declare that the Leafs will win by a score of 9 to 5., in honour of my five-cd Box Set of original Dolly Parton albums finally arriving in the mail.