The Toronto Maple Leafs will be in Columbus tonight to play the Blue Jackets.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are coming off their worst loss of the season, and honestly would probably like to forget their last three losses, which were terrible, but which weirdly surround their best game of the season.
Last game, you may or may not remember *(hopefully you have stricken it from your memory) but the Leafs lost 9-3, allowing nine goals for the first time in nearly a decade.
Before that, they were hammered by the Rangers, and embarassed by the Blue Jackets (great comeback, but it's not acceptable to go down 5-0 to the worst team in the NHL). In the middle of all those games was a 7-0 beatdown of their former GM's new team, the Pittsburgh Penguins.
So its been a weird week...
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Columbus Blue Jackets
The Leafs, as has been pointed out several times on this website, are getting a ton of lucky results even though outside of Matthews and Nylander they haven't really lived up to expectations this season from a play standpoint.
The question right now is if those results are indicitivfe of a future slide and if that slide has already begun.
A dominant win against a crappy team entering the Christmas break would go a long way in both silencing critics and assuring fans that the team is for real.
Unfortunately, with the Leafs this year, you never know what you're going to get.
According to dailyfaceoff, the Toronto Maple Leafs are going back to their default position and putting Marner with Matthews. I don't really care either way, but Matthews/Nylander/Knies was the only line that showed up in the their last game, so it seems weird to change it now.
Interestingly, the coach has not broken up the Domi line dispite how hilariously bad they were in the game against Buffalo.
Lagesson and Benoit will patrol the third pairing, and I think its stupid to scratch Conor Timmins in favor of Lagesson, because Timmins has been overally pretty great, even if he was terrible against Buffalo (hey, everyone was).
As of now, the goalie has not been announced, but I assume it will be Martin Jones because Samsonov has been horrendous and clearly needs a vacation.
After tonight, the Leaf are off until Wednesday when they will resume the season against Ottawa.