Toronto Maple Leafs coach hopes to defeat Bruins with worst lineup possible

The Toronto Maple Leafs have lost three out of their last four games, and the last two of them were completely brutal performances that all but rubbed the shine off the new coach.

The Toronto Maple Leafs will look to get back to their winning ways and will put their 4-4 record on the line aginst the Boston Bruins, who defeated them in seven games last spring.

The Bruins are off to a 3-4 start and do not appear to be the same team that dominated the NHL for the past two seasons.

The Bruins will start Jeremy Swayman - a noted Leafs killer - and the Leafs will answer with Anthony Stolarz.

Toronto Maple Leafs coach hopes to defeat Bruins with worst lineup possible

If you wanted to ice the worst lineup you possibly could with the Leafs current players, tonight's lineup would be a good place to start.

First, Max Domi is still playing second-line centre, even though it has become increasingly clear he's overmatched for such a role. Domi is a winger. Full stop. Every game the Leafs play him at centre is a more or less a joke.

Second, John Tavares is a much, much better player than Domi and it's wack that he's playing behind him in the lineup. The entire line also makes no sense. Tavares is a shooter, Paccioretty is a shooter (and probably shouldn't be in the NHL anymore) and Nick Robertson is a shooter. Who is supposed to pass these guys the puck?

Third, the coach continues to run out Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews, which just doesn't work. It is extremely frustrating that there aren't people on the Leafs who can explain some of the things keefe gave up on to Berube so that we wouldn't have to waste so much time finding out what we already know (namely that Domi is a winger and Marner should have his own line).

Fourth, Ryan Reaves is dressing again. This is a joke.

Fifth, Timothy Liljegren is sitting again. The Leafs have destroyed any value he might have had, and are for some reason not playing a perfectly good puck-moving defenseman who consistantly wins his minutes and has for 200 NHL games.

Sixth, no changes to the power-play. The Leafs, I believe, brought in Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins to explain why, but honestly, I wasn't listening.

But most hilarious of all has to be playing Simon Benoit - who is not an NHL player, let alone a guy who should get regular ice-time on a contending team - with Philpe Myers, who hasn't played since training camp.

I would expect this slow, poor puck-moving pairing to be an absolute disaster, but Craig Berube clearly knows more than I do, so I'm will to watch and see what happens.

Maybe this is actually a good lineup. I don't know. Perhaps everything we learned in the last 20 years of NHL hockey was wrong, and Craig Berube does, in fact, no best. I guess time will tell. But to these eyes, this lineup looks like it was made by a baseball coach who only recently had hockey explained to him.