The Toronto Maple Leafs host the Edmonton Oilers tonight for the only time this season at the ACC.
Unfortunately, the injury to Auston Matthews has denied fans of the best game of the Toronto Maple Leafs season. Of course the Leafs will visit the Oilers later in the year to give fans the NHL's premier matchup, but it's still a bummer to miss out on the chance to host such a game.
The Leafs will look to keep it going after a sweet comeback victory over the Washington Captials on Thursday, while the Oilers will look for their fourth straight victory after beating the Nashville Predators in overtime on Thursday.
The Leafs will be without Auston Matthews, while the Oilers will be without Viktor Ardvidson.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Edmonton Oilers
The Toronto Maple Leafs will dress Max Domi tonight despite him missing the last two practices with some sort of injury. He's been horrible, so they should just scratch him, but then again, they're already down Matthews and really don't have any centres to replace Domi with right now, no matter how badly he plays.
Inexplicably, the Leafs are scratching Alex Steeves, who had a pretty good game in his season debut the other night. They could scratch the absolutely unplayable Pontus Holmberg, the aforementioned Max Domi or the ECHL player known as Ryan Reaves, but Craig Berube has shown that he is one of the worst coaches in the NHL when it comes to the lineups he uses.
In keeping with the nonsense, Jani Hakanpaa is listed as on the first pairing with Morgan Rielly. Technically, Tanev/McCabe is the top-pairing, but this is still ridiculous, dumb, and not going to work. Hakanpaa likely isn't an NHL player, let alone someone you can use in your top four, but whatever.
Stolarz will be in net and give the Leafs their best chance at victory other than the fact that Stuart Skinner will be in net for the Oilers and he's scorching their season with his garbage play. The Oilers are not getting good goaltending and would otherwise likely be at the top of the league where they should be.
Overall, a fully healthy Oilers team is likely better than the Toronto Maple Leafs at this time, but without Auston Matthews the Leafs will be lucky just to keep this one close, which they likely will anyways. because Stolarz is on fire.