Jonas Gustavsson will make his much anticipated debut for the Maple Leafs in tonight’s preseason tilt against Detroit. Coach Ron Wilson has indicated that he will be in there for at least the first period, but that the staff wants to break him in slowly. If Toronto does not get barraged in the first twenty minutes as they have in recent exhibition matches, the Monster’s tenure may stretch to a period and a half.
The Swedish tender’s role on this team for the immediate future will likely be defined in this back-to-back with the Red Wings. While the Leafs brass are saying all the right things with respect to the possibility of Joey MacDonald sliding into the position of Vesa Toskala’s backup, it would truthfully take an awful showing on Gustavsson’s part for him to be relegated to third-string netminder. That’s not to take away from MacDonald’s excellent play in his brief time with the Leafs, but this is Gustavsson’s spot to lose.
Here are the lineups for tonight:
Maple Leafs Lineup
FORWARDS
Jiri Tlusty – Mikhail Grabovski – Nikolai Kulemin
Viktor Stalberg – Tyler Bozak – Christian Hanson
Rickard Wallin – John Mitchell – Lee Stempniak
Jay Rosehill – Nazem Kadri – Wayne Primeau
DEFENCE
Francois Beauchemin – Luke Schenn
Carl Gunnarsson – Garnet Exelby
Andy Rogers – Jonas Frogren
GOALIES
Vesa Toskala
Jonas Gustavsson
Red Wings Lineup
FORWARDS
Johan Franzen-Pavel Datsyuk-Tomas Holmstrom
Todd Bertuzzi-Valtteri Filppula-Dan Cleary
Kris Draper-Justin-Abdelkader-Mattias Ritola
Brad May-Kris Newbury-Francis Pare
DEFENCE
Nick Lidstrom-Brian Rafalski
Niklas Kronwall-Brad Stuart
Brett Lebda-Jonathan Ericsson
GOALIES
Chris Osgood
Jimmy Howard
Cheers,
Nikhil
