After their three-game winning streak was snapped on Saturday night, the Maple Leafs look to get back to winning ways against a familiar enemy in the Tampa Bay Lightning (7:30 p.m. EST, Amazon Prime).
Despite largely controlling the play at even strength, the Leafs broke through just once on New York’s Igor Shesterkin on Saturday night despite nine shots on goal from Auston Matthews and eight from William Nylander, and 11 of those were recorded as high-danger chances by Natural Stat Trick. The power play moved to 27th in the league at 12.5% after three more unsuccessful attempts against the Rangers.
Interestingly, as strong of a team as Tampa has been for many years now and as good as their starting goaltender is, the Leafs and their man advantage have generally scored on them at a good clip in recent seasons. Since 2021-22, the Leafs have scored nearly 3.5 goals a game and clicked at 25% on the power play against the Lightning in the regular season. However, they’ve been just as permissive in their own end of the rink, with 3.82 goals against and a 72% penalty kill over those 11 games.
With the Lightning entering the game at 3-1-0, powered by a red-hot first line (Guentzel – Point – Kucherov), it makes for quite the defensive test for the Leafs and a big matchup challenge, one that will largely fall to the Matthews line and Rielly-Tanev pairing on home ice. The Matthews-Marner-Tanev combination has yet to concede a goal at five-on-five while absolutely dominating the run of play to the tune of an 87% xGF share in 18 minutes of shared 5v5 time (2-0 in 5v5 goals).
The lone lineup change from the Leafs‘ loss to the Rangers is Max Pacioretty re-entering the fold in place of Ryan Reaves. With the Lightning running a fairly top-heavy look up front, there are opportunities to win the softer matchups down the lineup, of which Pacioretty needs to be a positive contributor tonight.
Game Day Quotes
Jon Cooper on the challenge presented by the Leafs under Craig Berube:
It’s the same cast of characters. They have a good team and are hunting north of 100 points. I know Sheldon (Keefe) and Craig (Berube) — two different styles, but they both win. They have some pushback in their game. I’d expect nothing less.
Craig Berube on the challenge presented by the Lightning:
This team knows how to win, for one. They have been a very good team for a long time.
Their top line is as good as it gets in the league. Very dangerous. The power play is dangerous, too, and there is a great goaltender in net.
Berube on the difficulty of shutting Nikita Kucherov down:
It is hard. He is elite. It is about trying to take away his options as much as we can and pressuring him. We have to be hard on their skill tonight. That is probably the best way to approach it.
In saying that, he is an elite player. He will make plays.
Berube on the challenge of going from facing Igor Shesterkin on Saturday night to Andrei Vasilevskiy tonight:
Well, they’re both very good.
We had plenty of opportunities last game. We missed the net at crucial times. It could’ve made a difference.
We can do a better job of creating second and third opportunities around the net with more scrums and get some dirty goals on these guys.
That is how you have to approach it.
Berube on why now was the right time to re-insert Max Pacioretty into the lineup:
I don’t know if it is a time thing. We have been playing pretty well.
We didn’t win last game, so we are just making a lineup change. We have back-to-back games here. I have an opportunity to get fresh guys in there and keep guys fresh for the next game.
Chris Tanev on the painful shot block on Saturday night:
It didn’t feel great. Sometimes, they get you in the spot where you get a dead leg, and you can’t move. That is sort of what that one did there.
I have been hit there plenty, but sometimes you get one in that spot, and it doesn’t feel great.
Tanev on the challenge of matching up against Kucherov:
Hell of a player. He plays the game at his own pace. He’ll slow it down. He’ll speed it up. We can’t let him dictate and control the game. We have to try to take as much time and space away from him as we can.
Toronto Maple Leafs Projected Lines
Forwards
#23 Matthew Knies — #34 Auston Matthews — #16 Mitch Marner
#74 Bobby McMann — #11 Max Domi — #88 William Nylander
#67 Max Pacioretty — #91 John Tavares — #89 Nick Robertson
#29 Pontus Holmberg — #64 David Kampf — #18 Steven Lorentz
Defensemen
#44 Morgan Rielly — #8 Chris Tanev
#95 Oliver Ekman-Larsson — #22 Jake McCabe
#2 Simon Benoit — #25 Conor Timmins
Goaltenders
#41 Anthony Stolarz
#35 Dennis Hildeby
Extras: Philippe Myers, Timothy Liljegren, Ryan Reaves
Injured (IR): Joseph Woll
Injured (LTIR): Calle Jarnkrok, Jani Hakanpaa, Connor Dewar, Dakota Mermis
Tampa Bay Lightning Projected Lines
Forwards
#59 Jake Guentzel — #21 Brayden Point — #86 Nikita Kucherov
#38 Brandon Hagel — #71 Anthony Cirelli — #41 Mitchell Chaffee
#14 Conor Geekie — #20 Nicholas Paul — #13 Cam Atkinson
#28 Zemgus Girgensons — #11 Luke Glendening — #23 Michael Eyssimont
Defensemen
#77 Victor Hedman — #90 J.J. Moser
#27 Ryan McDonagh — #81 Erik Cernak
#78 Emil Lilleberg — #43 Darren Raddysh
Goaltenders
#88 Andrei Vasilevskiy
#31 Jonas Johansson
