It’s back on the horse for the Toronto Maple Leafs tonight in Minnesota after a bad spill last night in Winnipeg.
The opportunity to play a second game in 24 hours should be a welcome sight for a Leafs team that will want to forget last night happened.
Coming off a collapse as bad as that and now in a back-to-back situation, we may see Mike Babcock mix Roman Polak or Frank Corrado as fresh legs into the defence pairings. Seth Griffith is an option up front, although the Leafs‘ fourth line was among their better lines in last night’s debacle. Josh Leivo did not travel with the team on the road trip. In net, Jhonas Enroth will start his first game as a Toronto Maple Leaf.
The Minnesota Wild are off to a 2-1-0 start under new head coach Bruce Boudreau, and enter the game coming off of two straight wins over the Jets and Kings following an opening night loss to the St. Louis Blues. Like many teams in the league, the Wild have scored a bunch of goals to start the season (12 in three games).
Through 50GP this season, NHL games averaging 1GF more (6.3) than last year at same point
— Kevin Gibson (@GibShow) October 20, 2016
Now with his third NHL team, Boudreau’s clubs have won their division in eight of his ten years in the league and broken the 50-win mark five times (with the lockout year prorated). After somehow making the playoffs with 87 points last season and losing out in round one, Wild fans have plenty of reason to believe their team is in good hands. Whether Boudreau can get a resurgent season out of the shell of the player formerly known as Eric Staal will be a key factor in how competitive the Wild will be down the middle of the ice. Early indications are that Boudreau is going to scale back defenceman Ryan Suter’s work load into more humane territory — he’s down from over 30 a night to around 26 through three games, and currently leads the team in scoring with four points through three games.
Mike Babcock’s Leafs are facing their first bit of adversity in the young season coming off of a disastrous final 30 minutes in Winnipeg. Bad nights are going to happen this season, particularly for a team with seven rookies in the lineup, and how they respond will determine how competitive the Leafs are going to be this season. The optimistic take is that the Leafs have collected points in three straight to start the year (four of six total) coming off a training camp that was mostly conducted without their head coach.
The Wild will have the rest advantage going into tonight, having last beat the Kings 6-3 on Tuesday night.
Minnesota Wild Projected Lines
Forwards
Zach Parise – Eric Staal – Charlie Coyle
Mikael Granlund – Mikko Koivu – Chris Stewart
Nino Niederreiter – Erik Haula – Jason Pominville
Jason Zucker – Zac Dalpe – Teemu Pulkkinen
Defence
Ryan Suter – Jared Spurgeon
Marco Scandella – Mathew Dumba
Jonas Brodin – Christian Folin
Goaltenders
Starter: Devan Dubnyk (Probable)
Backup: Darcy Kuemper
Toronto Maple Leafs Projected Lines
Forwards
van Riemsdyk – Tyler Bozak – Mitch Marner
Milan Michalek – Nazem Kadri – Leo Komarov
Zach Hyman – Auston Matthews – William Nylander
Matt Martin – Peter Holland – Connor Brown
Scratched: Seth Griffith
Injured: Josh Leivo (did not travel)
Defencemen
Morgan Rielly – Connor Carrick
Jake Gardiner – Roman Polak
Matt Hunwick – Nikita Zaitsev
Scratched: Frank Corrado
Injured: Martin Marincin
Goaltenders
Starter: Jhonas Enroth (Confirmed)
Backup: Frederik Andersen
