The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins 4-0 on Tuesday and also somehow managed to score three times on the power-play.
While it might not have been smart to score a half a season's worth of goals on the power-play in one night, the Toronto Maple Leafs are happy to get the monkey off their back, and will look to keep it going tonight against the Detroit Red Wings.
The Leafs will likely be without Auston Matthews, as the captain missed the last game and didn't practice yesterday.
I'll update this article accordingly throughout the day.
Baby Steps: Toronto Maple Leafs look to make it 2 in a row vs Detroit
The Leafs will likely start Anthony Stolarz tonight since they just got a shut-out, but there is a game against Montreal tomorrow, so there is a small chance that we will see Joseph Woll tonight.
The Red Wings beat the sad-sack Blackhawks in their last game to crawl back over .500 with a record of 6-5-1, which is very similar to the Leafs 7-5-2.
The Atlantic is in fact very tight, as just six points separate the Leafs and the last-place Montreal Canadiens. What is kind of crazy is that I read in the Athletic yesterday that the Sabres only have a 14% chance to make the playoffs.
What makes this crazy is that the Leafs have close to a 100% chance, and yet were Buffalo to win their game in hand, they would only be three points back of Toronto with 65+ games to go.
Anyways, as far as Detroit goes, who know what you're going to get. They seem to have stalled their rebuild and showed that it's hard for Lightning to strike twice in the NHL - Yzerman built one great team, but he's not doing so good on his second. This is likely because he was never that good and got very lucky with finds like Braydon Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy that you just can't count on repeating, no matter who you are.
That said, Detroit is a decent team. They aren't one of the NHL's worst, and so they are in that big mushy middle with the Leafs. At least for now. There is a good chance the Leafs will separate themselves from the pack if they can just stay healthy and find a centre to play on their third line.
I'll update with line combos and goalies later when the information comes available.