Home Leafs News Game Day Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Columbus Blue Jackets – Game #36 Preview, Projected...

Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Columbus Blue Jackets – Game #36 Preview, Projected Lines & TV Info

Dec 20, 2017

Puck Drop: 7:30 p.m. EST | Arena: Nationwide Arena | TV: SN Ontario | Radio: TSN 1050

Game Day Quotes

Mike Babcock on Mitch Marner’s breakout offensively vs. Carolina:

The number one thing that happened to Mitch yesterday is that he was ready to go. He made a real good play on the power play and he scored. And then the weight of the world, which he put on himself, came off of his back, and suddenly he was Mitch flying all over the ice. When the puck hit his stick, it didn’t bounce off of it. He had it. That just goes to show you the kind of pressure you can create for yourself and make it hard for yourself. That doesn’t matter if it’s your first year in the league or 20^th year in the league. You can make it hard for yourself. The best thing to do is just to work hard all the time. Just enjoy and don’t spend any time on your phone. Life will be easier for you.

Babcock on whether Marner is feeling the confidence boost:

100%. But it’s a different feeling for everybody. When you’re a good team in the league and you haven’t won in a bit, you want to win. No one wants to come to work and not have a good time. I guarantee you he’s lighter. He would’ve slept better. You feel better. You can joke around a bit more. They’re all the same. Willy is the same. Anybody who doesn’t have it going good and suddenly gets it going good – finally. But now live scared. Work that friggin’ hard. Understand how bad you felt. You don’t want to get it again.

Babcock on the importance of a good start and getting out to a lead in order to create space in the game later on:

Getting started on time is important. Yesterday, at the start of the game, they were all over us. We didn’t execute. They had the puck. And then we scored, loosened up, and got playing and played with pace. As they chased the game, there was more and more space. It was more fan friendly and everyone thinks you’re playing better, but that’s because there is more room. They are going to give you no room here today. That’s how the game is going to start, like most nights. We’re going to have to find a way to execute with no space, and then as the game goes on, create more and more for ourselves.

Babcock on the threat posed by a hungry Blue Jackets team:

There are lots of dangers. They’ve got real good players and they play hard. I don’t think it’s any different than us. They should be hungry and we should be real hungry. We just spent I don’t know how many days without a win. When you’re used to winning all the time, and you don’t win for a while, you don’t like the feeling. You get desperate. I think there should be two desperate teams tonight.

Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella on the need for a response from his team after an “embarrassing” effort versus Boston:

The Boston game speaks for itself as far as how sloppy it got. This is a reset. We really have to reset and just try to get some traction. We’ve got to get some stability underneath us here to get us back to our game. That, to me, is our play away from the puck. We need to get that straightened out and hopefully work off of that.

I’m anxious to see how we react. I thought we had a very good meeting today – a video session today. You know how I don’t like coming here in the mornings. I thought it was very important just to present what our mindset should be and our reset as far as a team. When you go through a game like Boston, which was by far our most embarrassing game, my name is on that. I am the coach of the team and my name is on that. I have not been able to get that taste out of my mouth. Right now it’s still in my mouth.

I hope the players understand how bad it was. I think they do, judging from our meeting today. But it’s easy to feel it and say you’re embarrassed. It’s how you go about your business after. Are you fragile and you just can’t get yourself out of it, or are you going to go after it here, and do the right things to try to remedy?

Tortorella on the team’s sloppy play away from the puck and the odd-man chances they’ve given up recently:

Why is it a lot lately? For most of the year, we were one of the best teams. Going into the last five games, I think we were one of the top teams as far as not giving up odd-man rushes. So why? To me, it’s a concentration thing. It’s just reading the play.

We’re not changing that part of the game. We are not going to dumb this down and keep our D back home and throw it off the glass and chase it all night long. We’re going to play. But you’ve just got to read the ice. I think we’ve had bad reads. We’ve been sloppy. That’s concentration.

In Boston, we were paralyzed with the puck and paralyzed without the puck. I asked them between the first and second period, “What’s going on?” It was just that bad. You just kind of get a blank stare. We’ve got to figure that out.

Matchup Stats

	TOR	CBJ
Record	21-13-1	20-13-1
GF/g	3.29 (6th)	2.76 (22nd)
GA/g	2.77 (9th)	2.71 (8th)
PP%	23.0% (5th)	10.2% (31st)
PK%	82.6% (10th)	82.4% (12th)
Shots/g	30.3 (24th)	34.2 (6th)
Shots Against/g	34.0 (29th)	30.6 (7th)
5v5 CF%	49.4% (18th)	52.3% (7th)
5v5 SV%	.931 (7th)	.923 (14th)
5v5 SH%	9.6% (1st)	7.4% (22nd)