The 30-18-2 Toronto Maple Leafs will host the 29-17-4 Minnesota Wild tonight at the ACC.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have had a nice little break, and have been off since Saturday when they lost the Ottawa Senators in what was the latest demonstration in their inability to score goals.
The Leafs have lost five of their last eight games and have six goals in those five losses. Worse, one of those losses featured half of the six goals.
The Wild will be without their best player, Kirill Kaprizov, for four weeks because he is having surgery to correct whatever caused him to miss 12 games so far this year.
The Leafs, who have their own injury troubles, may possibly get Max Pacioretty back tonight. That doesn't really matter though, as he's nothing more than a replacement player at this point. More importantly, Matthew Knies skated and may play on Saturday.
Toronto Maple Leafs vs Minnesota Wild
The Leafs had the best goaltending in the NHL on December 12th, when they were in fifth place overall in the NHL. Since then then they have been just the 15th best team in the NHL and have a record of 12-9. (naturalstattrick.com).
This is what happens when your goaltending goes from first place to 21st place.
No offense to Joseph Woll, but the sooner the Leafs get Anthony Stolarz back, the better. And, good news on that front, he is skating and may be back sooner than originally expected. The Leafs still somehow are holding onto first place in the Atlantic, but clearly their lead is slipping away.
By beating up on a whole bunch of loser teams *(they have 12 wins since December 13 and they beat Buffalo twice, NYI twice, Detroit, Philly twice and Montreal) the Leafs have maintained their first place position, and remarkably, their slide into mediocrity still saw them get more points than Florida, Boston and Tampa during the same period.
Tonight the Leafs will start Joseph Woll, while the Wild will go with Filip Gustavsson. The Leafs will be without knies, Tavares, Dewar and Stolarz.
But the main reason the Leafs are highly likely to lose tonight's game is because they are pathetically thin at centre ice and will dress Pontus Holmberg on the second line. How Brad Treliving can sit idly by and not act is beyond me, but he's clearly not cut out to be the GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs anyways, so....