Jack Campbell continues to be the flavour of the month as the Leafs look to help him continue his winning season. Sitting with a 5-0-0 record, 1.18GAA and 0.958SV%, Campbell is playing great hockey at the moment.
However, the task will be tough tonight as they invite Connor McDavid into their barn after going 3-0 in Edmonton a few weeks ago, while shutting the Oilers out in two of those games, and holding McDavid to zero points. The NHL’s leading point producer has 20pts in the 9 games he has played since than, while the teams have trended in different directions:
The hope is that the past two games, a shutout victory over Calgary and a 3-2 OT win against Ottawa, are closer to what we’ll see tonight. The play looked sloppy at times, but aside from two mishandlings of the puck from Jack Campbell that lead directly to goals, they played fairly solidly.
The lines are being a little jumbled tonight, with Sheldon Keefe looking or something that works:
According to head coach Sheldon Keefe, he has been looking for an opportunity to reunite Wayne Simmonds with John Tavares and William Nylander, as they appeared to be building some chemistry together before Simmonds was sidelined due to injury. If they can pick up where they left off they might be shackled together for the rest of the season.
Lastly, Frederik Andersen’s availability in the near future is murky. Originally it was reported that his injury would keep him out for an estimated 7-10 days, now his return is said to not be imminent:
This is raising a lot of speculation in terms of cap space and the trade deadline. If Andersen’s injury turns out to be one that will keep him out until the playoffs, then placing him on long term injury reserve will open up some cap space for the Leafs to use at the deadline to add players. Nobody wants to see a player get hurt, but that could really help the team in long run.
Enjoy the game.
GO LEAFS GO!!