After their three-game winning streak ended at the hands of the Washington Capitals, the Maple Leafs have a quick turnaround as they look to get back on track vs. the Penguins (7:00 p.m. EST, Sportsnet/CBC).
This marks the first of four back-to-backs that the Leafs will play this month, but in this case, the Pittsburgh Penguins also played the night before — and they lost, too.
Similar to the Leafs, the Penguins’ winning streak ended last night as they were riding a season-high four-game streak before falling to the Rangers. They recorded a number of impressive wins in that run, beating the Jets, Bruins, Flames, and Panthers as they tried to climb back into the playoff race. For all their recent success, Pittsburgh stills lead the league in goals against per game.
The Leafs will be getting Max Pacioretty back for the game tonight, his first time playing since November 9. Considering how it looked at the time of his injury, the fact that Pacioretty ultimately missed just under a month, at a time when the Leafs had large stretches where they didn’t play much hockey, is a dodged bullet, all things considered. For a Leafs team that has struggled to score with a largely non-existent bottom-six forward group, it’s a big boost to just have another credible, proven NHL scorer inserted back into the lineup.
Max Domi and Bobby McMann are expected to return soon, which means a number of Leafs forwards will need to pick up the pace, or they simply won’t find themselves in the lineup moving forward.
On defense, it will be interesting to see if the Leafs change anything up as the game goes along. They had real difficulty breaking out cleanly against the Capitals and the pairing of Rielly – Myers is getting worse as time goes along so far.
In net, Joseph Woll is riding a six-game winning streak. After an injury derailed the start of the season, he’s clearly coming on strong and is showing why the Leafs moved quickly to extend his contract in the summer.
Head-to-Head Stats: Maple Leafs vs. Penguins
In the 2024-25 regular season statistics, Toronto holds the advantage in three out of five offensive categories and four out of five defensive categories.
Toronto Maple Leafs Projected Lines
Forwards
#67 Max Pacioretty— #34 Auston Matthews — #16 Mitch Marner
#23 Matthew Knies — #91 John Tavares — #88 William Nylander
#29 Pontus Holmberg — #39 Fraser Minten — #92 Alex Nylander
#18 Steven Lorentz — #24 Connor Dewar —#75 Ryan Reaves
Defensemen
#95 Oliver Ekman-Larsson — #8 Chris Tanev
#44 Morgan Rielly — #51 Philippe Myers
#2 Simon Benoit — #25 Conor Timmins
Goaltenders
Starter: #60 Joseph Woll
#41 Anthony Stolarz
Extras: Marshall Rifai, Nick Robertson, Nikita Grebenkin
Injured (day-to-day): Jake McCabe
Injured (IR): Max Domi, Bobby McMann, Jani Hakanpää
Injured (LTIR): Calle Jarnkrok, David Kampf
Pittsburgh Penguins Projected Lines
Forwards
#67 Rickard Rakell — #87 Sidney Crosby — #17 Bryan Rust
#10 Drew O’Connor — #71 Evgeni Malkin — #18 Jesse Puljujarvi
#8 Michael Bunting — #46 Blake Lizotte — #72 Anthony Beauvillier
#13 Kevin Hayes — #19 Cody Glass — #55 Noel Acciari
Defensemen
#27 Matt Grzelcyk — #58 Kris Letang
#28 Marcus Pettersson — #65 Erik Karlsson
#38 Owen Pickering — #5 Ryan Shea
Goaltenders
Starter: #35 Tristan Jarry
#39 Alex Nedeljkovic
