The Toronto Maple Leafs will be visiting the Ottawa Senators tonight for their appointment on Hockey Night in Canada.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are coming off a loss to the Blue Jackets earlier this week in which they were the best team but did not manage to score while also receiving terrible goaltending from Dennis Hildeby.
Hildeby was then subsequently sent to the AHL in exchange for Matt Murray.
But tonight we will see Joseph Woll back in net, while the Sens will counter with Anton Forsberg.
The Maple Leafs Put Another Player on I.R, Recall Another Prospect, Play Sens
The Leafs come into this game with a three-point lead on the Florida Panthers for the Atlantic Division lead, and they are in sixth place overall in the NHL.
The Senators come into this game just one point out of a wild-card spot with a game in hand. They are in an insanely tight playoff race which currently sees four points separating six wild-card teams, and seven points separating nine teams.
The Senators have lost two games in a row, but were hot before that. Their main problem right now is that Brady Tkachuk hasn't scored a point in nine games.
The Leafs announced before the game that Conor Dewar is going on the injured-reserve and that they have recalled Nikita Grebenkin to the NHL. Grebenkin has eight goals and 16 points in 29 AHL games, which isn't that great, really. However, he did smash a guy and then steal the puck and almost score in his first game, so everyone loves him and he's already played a year in the KHL and is closer to NHL ready than a lot of other guys on the Marlies.
Certainly there is no downgrade from going to Dewar to Grebenkin, and there might even be an upgrade because Grebenkin will certainly be more fun to watch and he's got a way higher ceiling.
The Leafs have promoted Bobby Mcmann to the top line and they will be playing without a whole bunch of their regular forwards tonight. Tavares is out, Knies is out, and so is Pacioretty. That's half of their top-six, though Pacioretty isn't a top-six player anyways so it's not as bad as it seems.
Still they are without those three, and they are without Dewar, so that is an entire third of their regular forwards. They now have 2 x fourth liners on the third line and their fourth line is Jacob Quillian, Fraser Minten and Ryan Reaves.
I would suspect that Ottawa will get a Brady Tkachuck explosion and likely cruise to victory against a brutal Leafs lineup. Then again, all the players that matter for the Leafs are playing - Marner, Matthews, Nylander, McCabe, Rielly and Tanev - so they could be just fine.