Toronto Maple Leafs @ Detroit Red Wings
07:30 PM at Little Caesars Arena
Watch on: NHLN, BSDET, TSN4
Opponent’s Site: Winging It In Motown
Tonight’s game is for every lover of the Leafs prospect pool. This is your chance to see all the youth dressed in blue and white while Wayne Simmonds and Kyle Clifford play dad from the fourth line.
Them
The Red Wings are in the stage of their rebuild where they are trying to build out a balanced team, promote their best young players and not lose too many games. In our Rate the Atlantic exercise, you had Detroit in sixth place, which seems likely. They aren’t at the bottom of the league anymore, but they aren’t a playoff team yet.
Lines
Per Ansar Khan on Twitter, this is their lineup from morning skate, but the goalie choice isn’t clear yet.
Tyler Bertuzzi - Dylan Larkin - Lucas Raymond
David Perron - Michael Rasmussen - Jakub Vrána
Dominik Kubalik - Joe Veleno - Filip Zadina
Adam Erne - Pius Suter - Elmer Söderblom
Ben Chiarot - Moritz Seider
Simon Edvinsson - Filip Hronek
Olli Määttä - Gustav Lindström
Alex Nekeljkovic
Ville Husso
Us
The Leafs are sending their traditional “all the kids who will be cut” roster to Detroit, saving the real team for Saturday’s home game. The top players on the team are Rasmus Sandin and Ilya Samsonov, who should play the entire game. All eyes will be on Nick Robertson, though.
This is about making one last impression before the cuts — which are going to go how they go regardless.
Lines
From Mark Masters on Twitter, here we are:
Nick Robertson - Pontus Holmberg - Denis Malgin
Alex Steeves - Nick Aburzzese - Adam Gaudette
Bobby McMann - Semyon Der-Arguchintsev - Max Ellis
Kyle Clifford - Logan Shaw - Wayne Simmonds
Filip Král - Rasmus Sandin
Marshall Rifai - Victor Mete
Mikko Kokkonen - Mac Hollowell
Ilya Samsonov
Erik Källgren
The Game
This one is simple. If you want to play in the NHL, you have to be able to at least play the Red Wings as the best player on your line. If you can’t, no matter how good you look riding sidecar to William Nylander or Mark Giordano, you’re going to the AHL.
The only wrinkle here is that Victor Mete took a puck of the foot in practice, and was replaced in line rushes by the recovering John Tavares. We’ll find out if he’s fallen afoul of the Leafs D curse. But until then, two things:
Go Leafs (Marlies) Go.
Points up: note the game time.
