Maple Leafs

Forward Lines

Defence Pairings

Goaltenders

That’s right. An oddly apt 29 games into the season, William Andrew Michael Junior NylanderAtelius is back. I don’t want to overhype this, because after all he is but one player and this is his first game trying to shake the rust off, but on the other hand, Nylander is dope as hell.
Beyond that, this is the same old lovable, electric, defensively questionable cast of skaters to which we’ve become accustomed. Will Auston sleepwalk through half the game and then score the most murderous goal you’ve ever seen? Maybe!

The goaltending is a slight surprise, but it looks like Sparks is getting a start and Freddie’s getting rest.

Defence Pairings

Goaltenders

Well, here they are again. The Wings mostly have the classic bad team problem where everyone is playing about one line too high, excepting maybe Dylan Larkin, who might push towards being a legit 1C. He and Gustav Nyquist have started the year as a potent pairing. The player who impresses me every time we play Detroit is Anthony Mantha—who has both size and hands, though his production isn’t quite top tier—but one of the aforementioned hands is injured, so he’s out. So is Tyler Bertuzzi, who is serving a suspension.
On defence, Dennis Cholowski is the great hope of the future, holding down a top-pair job at age 20 and doing it...okayish enough. Everyone else in the defence group is at least 28 and most of them are not all that good now, so it’s not a murderer’s row back there.
Jimmy Howard has had an impressive run in net; he’s cooled off a bit lately but is still sitting at an impressive .920 for the year. If I’m Ken Holland, I really want to see what St. Louis would give me for him. Just sayin’.
Anyway, this has the makings of a trap game. Detroit is bad but not hopeless, emotions will be running high for Nylander’s return, and the Leafs are coming off a couple of sloppy wins where they got away with four points because their shooters and goaltending were outstanding. All the same: the Leafs are good, and Nylander is back.
Go Leafs Go.