The Toronto Maple Leafs will be going for their fifth win a row tonight when they take on the Philadelphia Flyers.
Unfortunately, the main storyline about tonight's game isn't about the Maple Leafs winning streak, or their recent trip to the very tippity top of the NHL standings.
The story tonight is about dumb decisions, revenge, and compounding those dumb decisions with an even dumber decision.
Also, Joseph Woll Will be in Net acting like either a Wall or a Well. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Crazy Lineup Decisions? Check. Hype for a Fight? Check. Maple Leafs vs Flyers!
Perhaps you recall a fortnight ago, minus 12 or so days, when the Leafs last played the Flyers. The Leafs best defenseman, Jake McCabe, made the gloriously stupid decision to get into a fight.
Fighting is an outdated and dangerous part of the game, but it still happens. However, considering the Leafs employ the objectively worst player in the NHL just to fight, it is mind-blowingly stupid to see their best defenseman getting injured in a fight.
McCabe, who recently took a puck to the head and missed five games, has a very recent history of head injuries, so he should not be fighting. But emotions got high and it happened.
The problem is that the Leafs now want revenge, and so they are scratching one of their best players so that they can insert Ryan Reaves into the lineup in the hopes he'll get into his first fight of the season against a guy I'm just going to assume is Anne Hathaway's brother.
Nick Robertson is second on the Leafs with a scoring rate of 3.52 points per 60 since December 1st. This is an elite scoring rate for anyone, but for a team struggling to score 5v5 and to get depth scoring, it's an insane decision to take him out of the lineup.
Also, considering how unlucky he was earlier in the season, messing with his confidence here just seems mean. Roberstson does not deserve to sit and this is just Berube compounding a problem by creating another one.
The Leafs are already without McCabe and will dress a laughably bad Top-Four that features Oliver Ekman Larsson and Philippe Myers. To make this problem worse, they are dressing their worst player in favor of their hottest player.
There are questionable lineup decisions, then there is whatever this is. Hopefully the Leafs win, but either way, their coach is making a terrible decision.