The Toronto Maple Leafs Face a Gruelling Schedule to Decide Playoff Seeding
The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Montreal Canadiens Saturday night to maintain their lead on Tampa Bay for the 3rd and final Atlantic Division playoff spot.
For a long time it looked like the Toronto Maple Leafs had a lock on the 3rd spot, but Florida faltered and Tampa caught fire. The Leafs have a four point lead on Tampa with a game in hand and six games to go.
They also havd two games in hand over Florida and are only five points back. Getting home ice for the opening round is extrmely important for whatever coin-flip series they end up playing in.
With a week and a bit to go, they've got a good chance of pulling it off.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Face a Gruelling Schedule to Decide Playoff Seeding
The Leafs max out at 109 points if they win every game from here on out, and Boston has 107 right now with four games to go. Boston has the tie-breaker, so even if the Leafs win out, they'd need the Bruins to go 0-4 in order to capture the Atlantic Title.
The Rangers are at 108 with five games left, so the Leafs don't really have any chance at fininishing first overall, but are still mathematically alive in the pursuit of the President's Trophy.
The Leafs play four times this week, and its a pretty rough schedule in the sense that all four games will have playoff implications for the teams they play.
The Leafs get Pittsburgh tonight, New Jersey tomorrow and Thursday, and finally they get Detroit on Saturday. They will close out the year with Florida and Tampa after that, so it's a pretty crazy final schedule.
It's also completely stupid that they play six games in ten days to finish out the season. Whoever came up with this schedule should not be allowed to do another one, becuase that is just ridiculous.
The Leafs are starting to get healthy, but they are still without Timothy Liljegren who appears to still be about a week away.
The Leafs are desperate to get him back because without him their blue-line is incredibly bad. It's not like he's a star, but he's still their 3rd best defender by about 100 miles, and they are so bad at moving the puck without him that's it not even funny.
On Saturday they dressed TJ Brodie, Ilya Lyubushkin, Mark Giordano and Simon Benoit in the same lineup. That's not the worst they've ever dressed, but the puck-moving ability of this group is horrendous. There is no way an NHL teams should be playing a game where Jake McCabe is their second-best puck-mover.
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Alas, Liljegren won't be back for a while and who knows how he'll play when he does? Either way, the. next week should be really fun and the playoffs are nearly upon us.