GAME DAY REPORT: MAPLE LEAFS @ BOSTON

Nov 10, 2018

After coming off a dominant win versus the New Jersey Devils last night your Toronto Maple Leafs jump right back into action as they travel to Boston to face the Bruins for another rendition of Hockey Night in Canada.

The Leafs and Bruins haven’t crossed paths since Game 7 of their first round series last year. In that game a lot of things happened that I don’t want to rehash and I’m sure Jake Gardiner feels the same way. The notorious night of “the dash five” should haunt him still, as it was one of the worst games he has played in Blue and White…. or maybe not, maybe the timing just made it feel that way. Either way, he and the rest of the blueline would be wise to pay attention to detail tonight, especially when the Bergeron line is on the ice. They have started the year on fire!!

With the Leafs missing 2/3rds of last years top line in Matthews and the unsigned Nylander, they are lacking some of their scoring punch. With that said they are still 3rd in the league in GF/GP (3.56 GF/GP) while being tied with the Minnesota Wild for 4th fewest GA/GP (2.56GA/GP). In a nutshell that means they are playing insanely good two-way hockey right now, but with all of that fire power missing, and facing a team that is no slouch defensively themselves (2.60GA/GP, good for 6th in the NHL), they need to be on their game tonight if they want to pull out a win.

The other story here is that Garret Sparks is the projected starter for the Leafs tonight. He’ll want to play a steady game to help his team to 2 points, and he’ll want to prove that he can do that after sitting for long stretches (which is a good quality to have as a backup), as he hasn’t seen game action in nearly a month, having last played on Oct. 15th vs L.A., in which he played very well.

**No projected lines as of yet but we’ll assume it’s status quo except for the goaltending.

Garret Sparks is the projected starter. #tmltalk https://t.co/dLmTfHVmlG

— Paul Hendrick (@HennyTweets) November 10, 2018

Contributing Writers

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